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Bomufii 


By 

3191.  Comiptan  Ititt 

AUTHOR  OF  "  8IRENICA  "  AND 
"  APOLOGIA  DIFFIDENTI8  " 


3f 


^etoHorfe:  John  Lane 
Company.  Hotttion: 
John  Lane,  The  Bodley 
Head.    .'.     .'.     mcmxix 


Copyright,  igig, 
By  JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  0"  Ives  Company 

New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


•PR 


^ 


CO 


Kai  5rj  (l>air]Ko:v  yai-qs  ax^^op,  ev^a  ot  aiaa 
'EK\pvyeeiv  neya  irelpap  oifuos  rj  /xiv  Uavei. 

Z  ODYSSEY  V.  289. 

r 

o 
o 
m 


34SO0G 


Domu0  Dolorfis 


Bomusi  ^oioxii 


THE  visible  world  was  gone;  sounds 
followed.  The  voices  which  but  now 
were  loud  in  the  ears,  grew  faint  as 
whispers,  or  as  tones  of  men  shouting  far 
away;  they  were  importunate  in  their  faint- 
ness ;  they  kept  thought  strained  after  a  mean- 
ing. There  had  been  hope  to  glide  out  of 
consciousness,  to  float  round  some  bend  of 
time,  as  a  straw  on  a  meadow  brook,  from 
the  bright  light  to  the  dim  and  thence  on  into 
a  darkness;  but  here  was  slow  escape,  as  it 
might  be  through  briers,  from  which,  again 
and  again,  the  caught  garment  must  be  freed. 
This  was  a  persecution  of  delays;  it  waked 
a  fretful  mood,  bitt-er  and  powerless  as  wrath 
of  age.  The  voices  now  came  back,  like 
echoes  on  a  changed  wind;  their  words  might 
7 


8  Domu$  DoIon$ 

almost  be  distinguished.  They  veered  away 
once  more,  to  hang  and  linger,  as  if  about  a 
corner  which  they  could  not  turn;  they  grew 
thin  as  the  hum  of  insects  preventing  sleep. 
At  last  they  were  wholly  round ;  they  were  no 
longer  heard.  A  great  contentment  rose. 
Yet  still  there  was  no  peace;  a  new  strain 
pressed  the  mind,  which  would  be  now  as- 
sured that  they  were  gone  for  the  last  time, 
utterly.  The  tension  became  pain ;  there  was 
a  longing  to  hail  and  have  no  answer,  but  all 
power  was  lost  over  lips  and  tongue;  in  night- 
mares one  had  known  such  impotence,  but 
this  was  more  than  dream.  At  the  point 
of  anguish  came  relief.  A  sweet  singing 
filled  the  ears,  diffused  at  first,  but  then 
divided  into  a  full  harmony  that  died  like 
chords  under  a  bow  drawn  slowly  to  the  tip. 
Silence  had  now  a  presage  of  some  divine  ap- 
proach. Oblivion  flowed  up  like  evening 
gloom.  Life  moved  with  it  to  the  edge  of 
a  great  deep;  it  was  drawn  over;  it  floated 
down  and  down,  wound  in  the  arms  of  Sleep. 

A  faint  awareness  stole  into  being,  like 
the  grey  of  morning;  then  a  sense  of  move- 


Domu0  Dolotis 


ment;  but  whether  it  was  a  coming  up  and 
forth,  or  a  declining,  there  was  no  power  to 
tell.  Slowly  light  increased;  this  was  resur- 
gence then,  a  soaring  back  into  the  embrace 
of  space  and  time.  It  was  the  most  suave 
and  gentle  issue  from  one  state  to  another 
that  may  be  conceived,  a  phase  so  delicate 
that  had  there  been  strength  to  wish,  the 
heart  would  have  had  it  last  forever.  It 
passed;  it  was  but  a  transience;  that  which 
had  blended  with  the  formless  was  taking 
form  again.  Life  was  returned,  the  bare 
life,  the  just-felt  difference  from  not  being, 
the  quietest  state  which  is  not  death;  yet  very 
life,  the  god-sent  human  treasure.  One  lay, 
as  it  might  be  on  a  cloud  becalmed,  steeped  in 
light,  drunken  with  a  cup  that  had  stilled  all 
passion.  Of  what  had  befallen  down  in  that 
silence  there  was  no  knowledge,  only  some 
dim  memory  of  being  borne  out  far  through 
a  twilight,  along  curves  wide  as  the  contours 
of  a  world. 

To  lie  thus,  just  existing,  was  all  felicity. 
Resting  upon  cloud,  the  substance  seemed  it- 
self of  cloud,  woven  so  fine  that  it  should  dis- 
solve upon  a  breath,  yet  guarded  and  folded 


lo  Domu0  Dolon$ 

round  by  over-brooding  peace.  The  mind 
had  no  thoughts  at  first;  it  was  a  capacity 
that  might  hold,  but  did  not;  it  was  a  dead 
space  quickened  by  trembling  air.  Then 
gradually  it  had  content,  which  began  with 
wonder  over  pain  miraculously  remitted. 
Thoughts  came  back  like  petals  floating 
down;  at  first  they  lay  apart,  but  when  more 
fell,  they  touched  and  clung  together.  There 
was  attraction  now,  but  no  power  to  conclude 
or  judge,  a  convergence  that  obeyed  no  plan. 
Reason  emerged,  but  went  ghostly,  following, 
as  in  a  trance,  processes  unwilled  that  yet 
should  have  been  her  own.  Like  drew  to 
like;  the  mind  discovered  order  in  some  way 
imparted,  and  a  rhythm  in  things,  like  verse. 
And  soon  it  seemed  not  to  witness  only,  but 
to  have  part  in  making.  Lines  joined  to 
clearer  form  and  hues  dissolved  to  blend 
more  richly;  it  felt  exalted  as  a  god  approv- 
ing a  creation.  The  remaking  of  a  lost 
world  seemed  the  smoothest  work  that  was 
ever  wrought.  For  the  spirit  was  released 
from  all  contrariant  influence;  it  had  free- 
dom to  enjoy  its  fulness.  Conscience,  the 
exacting,    the    never    pleased,    forsook    her 


Domu0  Dolotisi  n 

office  for  a  while;  no  voice  called  irksomely 
to  resolve  or  deed.  The  heart  was  light  and 
careless ;  the  song-bird  on  the  bough  had  not 
more  gladness.  A  great  peace  reigned,  in- 
effably unmarred  and  flawless.  No  peace 
so  unassailed  had  been  since  childhood;  here, 
carried  into  living  sunlight,  hovered  the  ut- 
ter blissfulness  of  dreams.  Now  was  at- 
tained once  more  the  self-sufficing  day,  the 
film-sphere  never  pierced,  floating  secure  by 
all  the  thorns.  There  was  no  taking  thought 
for  morrows,  no  duty  but  to  live.  If  cares 
had  ever  been,  they  had  crept  into  a  hiberna- 
tion; life  had  gone  onward  out  of  winter, 
leaving  them  forgotten.  The  past  was  but 
a  haze,  the  future  a  blue  unclear  horizon  to 
be  advanced  upon  some  day  or  never,  the 
gods  knew  how  or  when.  Or  rather  it  was 
like  the  sum  of  days  which  were  outshapen 
for  us  when  as  yet  there  was  none  of  them, 
and  the  years  lay  unarisen. 

Now,  suddenly,  there  was  an  end  made  of 
this  passiveness.  The  still  wine  sparkled. 
Life,  which  had  been  as  a  held  breath,  passed 
into  a  sigh  of  pleasure  as  the  self  came  out 
of  abeyance,   eager  for  earth  again.     And 


12  Domusi  Doloris 

it  was  perplexed  with  earth,  as  one  should  be 
who  returns  from  a  voyage  and  finds  his 
home  in  unexplained  ways  strange  to  him. 
These  hours  should  have  been  dark  under  the 
first  consciousness  of  freedom  lost:  they 
glowed.  There  should  have  been  a  sinking  of 
the  heart :  the  heart  was  lifted  up.  The  whole 
nature  was  as  a  trampled  grass  when  the 
crushing  foot  is  gone;  it  had  yielded  only  to 
recoil.  The  recovery  seemed  too  perfect  for 
belief;  insensibly,  the  mind  drew  back  upon 
its  guard,  suspecting  snares  of  fate.  For  in 
former  days  when  the  cup  of  joy  was  prof- 
fered, so  often  there  had  been  wormwood  in 
the  lees.  But  here  appeared  a  gift  without 
condition  or  reserve;  it  was  pure  largess. 
Life  unfolded  as  at  the  beginning,  but  more 
happily,  inasmuch  as  rebirth  is  goodlier 
change  than  birth.  For  the  infant  passes  out 
of  night  or  day,  which  you  will;  if  any  knowl- 
edge he  had,  he  moves  from  it  into  forgetful- 
ness.  But  the  reborn  win  back  their  own; 
they  remember  as  they  come.  And  there 
was  felt  an  influence,  untraced  and  beyond 
seizure,  yet  actual  as  one's  own  life;  it  seemed 
to  play  over  the  awakened  spirit  like  sun- 


Domusi  Dolon0  13 

light  on  a  face  turned  upward.  There  was 
an  ambience,  an  irradiation;  all  the  nature 
was  warmed  with  a  vernal  brightness.  It 
was  so  graciously  and  softly  shed  that  despite 
the  will  to  discover  what  It  was  or  whence  it 
flowed,  you  would  not  seek,  lest  something 
of  the  magic  should  be  lost;  you  let  the 
bright  hours  pass;  you  looked  out  on  things 
as  if  from  under  half-closed  lids,  sunned  to 
the  heart,  wholly  content.  Enough  at  first 
to  feel  the  light,  after  chill  of  that  oblivion 
to  be  warmed.  But  in  time  it  was  as  if  a 
clear  surface  welled  up  within  and  took  re- 
flection; there  came  a  moment  when  this  glad 
influence  was  discerned,  when  it  was  known 
as  the  spirit  of  human  helpfulness  ordered 
and  constrained  to  law,  such  as  nowhere  or  at 
any  time  in  a  life  too  much  withdrawn  had 
been  felt  immediate  thus  to  sense,  and  pene- 
trative of  the  whole  nature.  For  here  it  was 
not,  as  when  earlier  encountered,  all  inter- 
volved  with  contraries,  half  cancelled  by 
touch  of  commoner  things,  but  discrete  and 
separated  out,  the  very  genius  of  the  place  in 
which  it  shone.  It  was  more  beautiful  and 
vivid  through  the  very  straitness  of  the  place. 


14  Domu0  Doloris 

The  boundless  is  nothing  to  us,  uncontained; 
we  first  know  the  immeasurable  when  it  is 
poured  into  our  measures.  The  place  was  a 
narrow  inlet,  but  throbbing  with  sea-life, 
vitally.  There  came  back  memories  of  little 
western  harbours  that  brimmed  to  the  wharfs 
edge  at  the  flood,  and  of  the  boats  that  lifted 
and  fell  in  them  to  an  Atlantic  rhythm,  danc- 
ing the  livelier  by  reason  of  that  confinement. 
Such  little  havens  had  brought  the  soul  of  the 
outseas  into  the  land;  the  life  of  landsmen, 
touched  by  it,  grew  larger.  Here  was  a  like 
power  of  mid-sea-deeps  borne  far  in  from 
the  very  main  of  light.  To  a  nature  used 
to  dimness  it  was  great  experience;  it  was 
illumination.  One  seemed  to  hear  a  voice 
that  whispered:  the  days  go  lovelier  hence- 
forth, and  the  suns  more  splendid, 

gratior  it  dies 
Et  soles  melius  nitent. 


II 


AND  yet  the  haven  of  light  was  the 
House  of  Pain.  The  wonder  of  that 
knowledge  spurred  the  mind;  it  must 
up  and  explore  a  place  which  had  heen  no- 
place to  its  old  geography,  and  inhabited  by 
folk  of  nowhere.  The  mind,  shamed  and 
humbled  by  that  ignorance,  was  very  fain  to 
obey;  as  the  seaman  goes  inland  from  the 
shore  of  wreck  to  learn  on  what  country  he 
is  flung  and  amid  what  people,  so  it  went 
forth  eagerly  to  discover.  And  chiefly  it 
would  know  the  people,  in  whom  its  hope 
lay  of  bcng  restored  to  its  own  home  again. 
What  manner  of  folk,  then,  were  they  who 
imparted  and  administered  this  brightness? 
A  strange  folk,  who  went  hare  of  all  pre- 
tence but  one,  tliat  they  were  ortlinary  men 
and  women.  In  which  honourable  imposture 
they  might  almost  have  deceived,  for  in  truth 
their  virtues  stood  in  them  so  naturally  as  to 
seem  carried  unawares.  The  dweller  in 
their  wards  was  not  long  in  doubt  of  them; 
15 


1 6  Domus  Doloti0 

he  found  them  different  from  himself  in  the 
inner  grain,  shedding  light  where  he  cast 
shadow.  To  him  they  soon  betrayed  them- 
selves with  every  movement;  but  if  it  pleased 
them  to  suppose  him  sightless,  who  was  he 
to  deny  them  pleasure?  To  him  they  re- 
mained Utopians  to  the  end,  a  good  hope 
growing  up  that  this  spirit  of  theirs  should  be 
one  day  borne  beyond  houses  of  pain,  that  it 
should  take  to  itself  all  spirits  of  like  clean 
flame,  that  together  they  should  go  forth  to 
destroy  the  germs  of  human  ills  in  the  swamps 
and  marshes  where  they  breed  before  they 
reach  the  blood  of  men.  These  doctors  had 
nothing  of  the  i^sculapian  pose;  they  were 
rather  of  the  sailor's  open  humour.  These 
nurses  in  like  manner  seemed  to  possess  in 
their  inmost  nature  some  buoyant  quality  of 
the  seas.  Watching  their  instant  answer  to 
all  need,  you  remembered  Ocean's  daughters 
in  the  great  legend,  who  sped  so  fast  to  one 
in  pain  that  they  would  not  stay  to  bind  their 
sandals.  And  through  many  long  weeks  a 
similitude  that  might  at  first  have  seemed  too 
lofty,  was  found  never  to  lose  its  fitness. 
For  though  often  to  outward  view  they  were 


Domu0  Dolotis;  17 

little  like  winged  beings,  though  often  they 
dragged  weary  feet  noisily  upon  hard  floors, 
the  brave  intent  flew  still;  it  soared  and  it 
alighted. 

The  doctor  was  the  known,  so  too  thesur- 
geon;  both  were  familiar  forms  in  the  old 
life.  But  the  nurse  was  almost  the  unknown ; 
marked,  therefore,  for  a  nearer  scrutiny. 
Hard  sayings  were  mingled  with  the  praise 
given  to  this  sisterhood  out  in  the  infaming 
and  censorious  world :  they  came  Into  memory 
now.  Some,  it  was  whispered,  were  called 
to  nothing  but  adventure;  they  had  no  voca- 
tion but  to  fly  their  homes.  Some  were 
puffed  up  by  little  breaths  of  science.  Some 
were  cruel,  some  were  false;  here  a  hard  na- 
ture played  catlike  with  suffering,  there  a 
vain  one  served  only  to  be  seen  of  men. 
These  rumours,  which  even  to  ignorance  had 
seemed  too  like  the  snake's  hiss  from  the 
grass,  might  now  be  put  to  the  proof,  since 
one  was  delivered  over  bound  Into  the  hands 
of  this  tribe,  a  captive  in  its  tents;  a  case,  a 
subject,  an  anatomy.  A  great  chance  was 
now  come,  to  know  truth;  one  sought  to  use 
it  to  some  purpose.     And  so  for  weeks  one 


Domus  Doloris! 


lay  deliberately  observing,  seeing  these 
tribeswomen  at  all  hours  under  all  conditions, 
when  they  were  fresh  or  weary,  pleased  or 
vexed,  smarting  under  some  failure,  glad  for 
some  success.  One  learned  to  read  their 
faces  as  they  reflected  circumstance,  and  so 
came  by  degrees  at  the  natures  hidden  be- 
neath; one  learned  what  their  life  was,  how 
occupied  and  how  disposed,  how  tried,  how 
rewarded.  After  a  month  or  so,  one  had 
approached  the  beginnings  of  an  actual 
knowledge;  one  knew  at  least  some  things 
not  born  of  rumour,  but  of  reality. 

Perhaps  the  first  truth  that  stood  out  from 
among  the  fictions  was,  that  they  were  of 
that  very  world  which  praised  or  blamed 
them ;  they  were  its  conscious  citizens.  They 
felt  the  old  earth  under  them  and  were  glad 
of  it;  they  wished  you  to  be  glad  as  they. 
Not  theirs  the  still  unworldliness,  the  dis- 
passionate serene  calm  of  the  vowed  reli- 
gious, almost  too  rare  and  fine  for  the  cheer 
of  sick  humanity;  they  were  human  through 
and  through.  That  old  comparison  with 
angels  ministrant  would  have  been  gall  to 
them;  they  ministered,  but  not  so;  they  were 


Domu0  Doloti0  19 

of  our  fellowship  and  would  have  no  excom- 
munion.  Yet  their  life  also  was  a  devotion; 
something  greater  than  themselves  most 
plainly  wrought  In  them.  But  they  never 
renounced  their  individual  natures;  putting 
off  the  self,  they  kept  the  person.  Thus  they 
held  their  several  judgment  and  the  right  to 
proclaim  It  of  their  own  will  and  motion;  not 
to  transmit  It  only,  as  mere  vehicles  or  chan- 
nels, but  to  lend  it  some  colour  and  quality  of 
their  own  giving.  Thus  It  was  that  theirs 
was  no  undlscerning  gentleness;  ungentle  they 
never  were,  but  something  they  would  gradu- 
ate against  unworthiness.  They  were  very 
tender  with  all  who  could  endure;  but  against 
self-pity  they  could  point  disdain  by  a  glance, 
or  by  an  eyebrow  lightly  raised.  What 
deeper  springs  moved  them,  they  would  not 
suffer  to  be  seen,  after  the  English  manner; 
all  the  profession  of  their  creed  was  action. 
Reflecting  on  two  great  systems  of  tending 
pain,  you  felt  them  in  their  elements  incom- 
parable, and  each  in  its  sort  supreme;  they 
might  not  be  measured  with  a  single  rod. 
Nor  could  you  wish  them  ever  joined;  they 
had  the   fine   dissemblance  within   one  kind 


20  Domus  Doloris 

which   makes   noble   variance,   and   a   fuller 
harmony  throughout  the  world. 

The  second  feature  of  this  community 
which  shone  conspicuous  was  its  free  consent 
to  discipline,  under  which  it  was  never 
crushed,  but  stood  like  a  waving  cornfield  in 
the  breeze,  freshened  by  searching  airs. 
Here  was  a  bending,  undepressed  obedience 
that  harmed  neither  liberty  nor  joy;  it  was 
service  without  part  in  servitude.  These 
open  natures  had  pride  of  trained  efficiency, 
and  pleasure  of  the  swing  and  rhythm  which 
it  lent  to  all  they  did;  it  was  the  pride  of  a 
warship's  crew.  But  they  were  voided  and 
rid  of  small  conceit,  the  spirit  of  their  law 
was  too  far  passed  into  them  to  need  dis- 
plays ;  they  held  simply  to  their  high  tradition. 
By  the  side  of  the  great  hospitals,  their 
house  had  seemed  a  little  vessel;  yet  it  was 
of  the  Fleet,  and  they  were  jealous  of  the 
mighty  membership.  They  knew  themselves 
a  force  embodied  and  in  a  great  allegiance. 
But  they  never  vaunted  it;  for  their  sister- 
hood is  of  the  kind  aspiring  once  for  all,  as 
knighthood  vows,  and  afterward  guarding 
silence,  lest  boasting  hinder  deed.     All  who 


Domu0  Dolotis  21 

with  a  good  heart  enter  upon  this  career  live 
at  the  full  stretch  of  endeavour;  their  service 
is  always  active  service;  they  stand  to  arms; 
they  are  commanded  and  obey.  They 
know  neither  long  ease,  nor  rehearsals  of 
imagined  war ;  their  enemy  is  ever  upon  them ; 
sickness  grants  no  truce  and  death  no  armi- 
stice. Many  essay  the  yoke,  but  none  endure 
under  it  save  those  in  whom  is  the  worth  that 
weigheth  inward.  The  weakling  falls  out 
of  ranks  like  these;  the  keeping  of  them  is 
too  hard  for  any  but  the  brave. 

For  what  strain  is  hourly  upon  the  nurse, 
they  who  sojourn  long  in  the  wards  alone 
may  know.  The  house  of  pain  is  full  of 
shadows;  it  is  she  who  must  hunt  them  down 
and  let  none  lie.  For  here  there  is  blood 
shed  every  day,  here  pain  is  at  home  like  a 
hard  master.  Odour  of  drug  and  anodyne 
clings  to  the  bare  walls;  it  hangs  even  in  the 
rounded  angles  where  cobwebs  have  no  hold; 
while  every  window  is  wide  to  the  summer 
breezes,  somewhere  it  will  be  clinging  still. 
The  morning  air  is  full  of  it,  the  noon  air  full; 
it  is  borne  on  the  light  breath  of  night.  It 
clings  about  the  garments  and  in  the  hair; 


22  Domu0  Dolon'0 

it  creeps  into  refectories  and  chambers. 
Day  in,  day  out,  and  all  nights  through 
youth  and  health  must  house  with  death  and 
sickness;  of  that  tenancy  there  is  no  forget- 
ting. They  who  serve  here  must  eat  and 
sleep  in  the  perception  of  mortality;  they 
wake  into  a  fated  sadness.  Are  they  re- 
leased awhile  beyond  the  shadow?  At  their 
return  it  awaits  them  on  the  threshold;  as 
surely  as  they  drive  it  far  from  others,  so 
surely  will  it  turn  to  threaten  them.  When 
they  are  all  fordriven  and  droop  under  their 
burden,  or  when  some  private  sorrow  falls  on 
them,  not  even  valiance  may  ensure  to  them 
the  even  mind  without  which  they  fail.  They 
know  hours  when  day  is  hard  as  noon  of 
pestilence,  and  darkness  like  gloom  of  sacri- 
ficial groves;  yet  still  they  must  go  gallantly 
and  sound  their  point  of  war.  And  always 
they  must  be  prepared  to  look  straightly 
upon  hideous  things,  on  sores,  on  mangled 
limbs,  on  the  bared  fibres  of  the  body,  on 
death  with  livid  face  and  fallen  jaw.  With 
stained  hands  they  must  touch  foulness;  they 
must  watch  knives  cut  quick  flesh.  Some- 
times, when  they  are  overwrought,  you  fancy 


Domu0  Dolon0  23 

that  they  see  with  the  dying,  eye  to  eye,  shar- 
ing mortal  fears;  that  in  malign  light  they 
have  glimpse  of  the  gate  where  pale  diseases 
haunt,  and  sad  age — all  the  dreadful  shapes 
that  gather  In  the  dark  entry  to  encounter  the 
passing  soul.  In  such  hard  assay  not  even 
youth  and  health  may  alone  suffice  them;  the 
faith,  the  pride  of  their  tradition  must  shine 
clear,  and  honour  pledged  to  standing  firm, 
else  they  who  save  shall  themselves  need  suc- 
cour. Lying  oneself  in  the  oppression  of  the 
besieging  shadows,  gradually  one  came  to 
know  the  manifest,  and  imperfectly,  with  laic 
mind,  to  divine  the  never  told.  Slowly  and 
with  pains  gathering  up  such  gleanings,  one 
understood  how  little  the  unstricken  know, 
who  come  at  a  fixed  hour  with  the  visitant 
flower-bearing  throng,  and  looking  round  on 
white  linen  and  gladdened  faces  think  It 
were  no  such  hard  lot  to  labour  here.  Yet 
even  these,  entering  or  departing,  are  some- 
times startled  from  complacent  moods,  and 
guess  at  truths  concealed.  A  sharp  cry 
reaches  them;  they  pass  a  door  ajar  on 
ominous  shapes;  they  hasten  their  steps 
outward,  with  a  sense  of  something  follow- 


24  Domu0  Doloris 

ing  after  them,  as  if  Death  touched  their 
shoulders.  All  such  do  but  guess;  they 
cannot  know.  For  knowledge  there  must  be 
suffering  and  long  sojourn,  and  some  thirst 
for  truth,  by  which  things  at  least  one  was 
now  in  some  small  measure  qualified. 

Weeks  passed  into  months;  moons  shone 
and  waned;  but  these  people  held  on  their 
way ;  they  changed  only  to  grow.  They  were 
a  perpetual  source  of  wonder,  being  of  a 
temper  so  remote  from  that  of  the  bargaining 
and  begrudging  world,  of  which  the  boast  is 
that  for  nought  it  will  give  nothing.  You 
could  not  but  marvel  at  them  all,  men  and 
women,  whose  nursling  and  dependent  by 
some  high  chance  you  were  become.  But 
chiefly  you  must  marvel  at  the  younger,  who 
grew  so  fast  and  straight.  In  this  forcing- 
house  of  qualities  you  might  mark  the  visible 
change  of  ingenuous  eager  natures,  a  gra- 
cious thing  to  see.  There  were  collected  here 
in  the  exercise  or  probation  of  this  service  not 
spirits  of  great  dower,  only  clear  souls, 
such  as  yearly  come  from  quiet  homes  Into 
the  world,  to  take,  as  fate  wills,  Its  light  or 
darkness.     Here  they  splendidly  took  light, 


Domu0  Dolotis  25 

and  shot  up  sunward,  until  one  came  to  think 
of  the  whole  place  as  some  corner  in  the  City 
of  the  Sun.  Here  budded  and  flowered 
under  a  fair  discipline  those  who  else  might 
have  lived  narrowly,  scarce  profitable  to 
their  kind.  Here  was  womanhood  bearing 
the  yoke  in  youth,  and  solving  unawares  a 
Sphinx's  riddle.  You  could  not  conceive 
them  fretting  over  a  small  pain,  or  bearing 
a  mean  tale,  or  seeking  an  unfair  advantage. 
If  they  were  true  to  themselves,  they  were 
true  also  to  each  other,  a  thing  imagined 
beyond  the  compass  of  their  sex;  they  prac- 
tised loyalty  like  men.  The  yoke  bore  hard 
upon  their  shoulders;  often  it  galled;  they 
saw  more  sad  than  joyous  things.  Yet  they 
flourished;  their  life  was  the  utterance  of 
natures  glad  in  growth;  they  breathed  as 
cheerfully  in  this  air  of  pharmacies,  having 
no  time  for  sighs,  as  if  they  had  been  shep- 
herdesses on  mountains.  They  had  the 
gaiety  attuned  to  earnest  life  which  the  wards 
teach  well,  heightening  the  faint  mood,  draw- 
ing the  frivolous  down,  the  humour  Biron 
was  to  learn  in  place  of  his  bird's  wit,  jesting 
his  twelvemonth   in   a   hospital.     In   short. 


26  Domu0  Doloris 

they  so  plainly  advanced  in  the  great  human 
art  of  hving  well,  that  they  were  perceived 
as  beings  rare  and  significant,  whom  to  have 
known  in  their  clear  energy  made  all  suffer- 
ing and  confinement  good. 

Many  times,  with  the  caution  learned  in 
the  world,  the  mind  would  go  back  over 
traversed  ground  to  be  assured  that  in  this 
judgment  it  was  not  borne  away  by  a  rush  of 
grateful  sentiment,  but  that  it  had  decided 
slowly  and  by  things  proven:  leisure  enough 
one  had.  Heaven  knew,  to  compare  and 
balance,  laid  for  weeks  supine,  and  lashed  to 
a  splint  like  a  weaver's  beam.  Large  room 
was  made  in  the  account  for  natural  defects 
and  fallings  short,  which,  if  never  seen,  must 
have  existed  in  hearts  so  human.  There 
were  conceded  jealousies,  cross  humours, 
petulance,  rebellion  in  the  bud,  desire 
of  things  forbidden,  all  which  must  needs 
arise  in  a  scene  of  urged  activities,  when 
nerves  are  sometimes  tense  to  the  point 
at  which  they  bear  no  more.  One  had 
not  looked  for  the  ideal  in  the  natural,  or 
for  the  perfected  in  the  unfulfilled.  Yet  with 
all  concession  of  unseen  defects,  the  favour- 


Domu!8!  Dolotig  27 

able  judgment  Held.  Had  serious  blemish 
been,  it  must  have  left  some  mark  on  a  col- 
lective action  under  scrutiny  day  after  day, 
it  must  have  affected  the  spirit  which  in- 
formed this  common  labour;  at  some  point  or 
other,  it  must  have  been  betrayed  to  a  sensi- 
bility sharpened  by  events  for  just  such  subtle 
divinations.  But  there  was  no  betrayal, 
much  less  proof  of  any  such  finished  hypo- 
critic  art  as  could  have  kept  a  canker  hid- 
den. These  labourers  were  justified  by 
their  works,  and  by  their  faces.  For  if  it 
be  examined  day  by  day,  a  face  is  a  good 
witness.  The  physiognomists  have  their 
wisdom;  the  moulding  of  a  brow  speaks;  the 
curves  of  a  mouth  confess.  Here,  after  a 
month,  no  faces  were  left  doubtful.  Some 
were  of  a  nobler  cast  than  others;  they  had 
various  utterances.  But  all  bore  one  testi- 
mony. 


Ill 


THIS  was  the  point  at  which  great 
as  when  the  traveller,  coming  from 
prospect  burst  on  the  view.  It  was 
bare  mountains,  looks  suddenly  from  a  crest 
upon  Damascus,  with  the  great  plain  made 
one  garden  by  Abana,  and  minarets  and 
domes  rising  white  amid  orchard  verdure. 
If  these  people  were  but  types,  what  hopes 
dawned  for  the  world  and  for  our  land;  the 
foundations  of  the  City  of  the  Sun  were  laid; 
no  folly  but  the  supreme  could  build  on  them 
with  wood  and  stubble.  For  an  absolute  ex- 
cellence was  here,  fashioned  not  from  rare 
natures  by  great  fortune,  but  from  the  aver- 
age, and  without  favour.  It  was  the  same 
virtue  now  being  made  illustrious  amid  dan- 
gers in  the  fierce  trial  of  war;  it  was  the  po- 
tential of  that  actual.  Your  life  for  it.  If 
their  hour  came,  these  also  should  endure  the 
proof;  you  knew  it  of  infallible  knowledge 
now;  you  would  go  to  the  stake  for  the  be- 
lief.    Yet  thousands  up  and  down  the  land 

2S  I 


Domu0  Dolon0  29 

were  of  the  same  courage  and  capacity;  they 
needed  but  the  learning  of  a  like  law  to 
prove  it;  and  if  rulers  had  but  wit  to  turn 
these  forces  into  other  fields,  not  for  the 
remedial  end  alone,  as  here,  but  for  the  pre- 
ventive, against  ills  that  on  all  sides  wait  such 
powers,  what  wastes,  what  deserts  should  not 
be  reclaimed  for  habitable  earth.  If  rulers 
but  imagined,  what  visions  coming  time 
should  show:  the  rippling,  flowing  strength, 
now  poured  to  waste,  all  channelled  and 
conducted;  tithings  first  saved,  and  hundreds, 
then  counties,  provinces,  empires,  king- 
doms; the  law  of  helpfulness  made  universal, 
the  perfect  commonwealth  achieved.  The 
mind  rehearsed  immensities  of  happy  change. 
Whether  it  dreamed  or  prophesied  it  cared 
not:  it  was  in  bliss.  One  was  as  if  touched 
by  some  rod  of  miracle  through  which  a  heal- 
ing power  had  streamed.  There  was  con- 
tact with  a  great  influence;  the  feel  of  it  was 
all  vivid  within.  Yet  the  first  touch  had  not 
been  felt, — so  gently  it  had  come,  on  such 
unsuspected  ways.  Often  before  one  had 
known  the  supreme  thing  near,  and  a  virtue 
had  passed  from  it;  but  always  it  had  risen 


30  Domus  Dolorig 

in  some  apparent  majesty  of  art  or  nature; 
one  had  stood  before  it,  as  it  were,  stricken 
into  awe.  But  now  the  soul  was  in  full  defer- 
ence, not  even  knowing  how  homage  began; 
there  had  been  no  moment  of  which  you 
might  have  said:  then  and  thus  was  the  sur- 
render. This  quietness  of  supremacy  took 
faster  hold  of  the  imagination  than  swift  as- 
sault of  charm. 

And  now  it  was  more  clearly  seen  wherein 
lay  the  differing  and  peculiar  strength  of  these 
lives :  they  were  more  quick  with  human 
kindliness,  they  were  in  the  best  way  civic. 
For  to  be  civic  is  not  to  abjure  selfhood,  but 
to  have  the  sense  of  all  selves  in  your  own, 
or  in  a  poet's  words,  to  make  the  Whole  one 
self.  Personality  is  birthright,  no  more  to 
be  given  away  than  sold,  and  to  be  guarded 
by  all  forces  which  may  consist  with  love.  It 
must  be  kept  in  its  distinction,  and  visibly 
exist  in  its  own  fulness.  To  renounce,  to 
abrenounce,  the  form  and  character  of  the 
individual  nature  is  to  disserve  the  general 
good;  save  for  a  rare  few,  whose  city  is  not 
here,  it  is  vanity  of  abnegation.  The  city  in 
its  need  shall  ask  of  you  to  stake  for  it  your 


Domu0  Dolocis!  31 

sum  of  days;  it  shall  not  wring  from  you  by 
slow  constraint  the  days  of  your  years;  when 
it  has  attained  to  wisdom,  it  shall  suffer  none 
else  to  wring.  For  by  your  swift  sacrifice  the 
greater  life  may  gain,  as  by  death  of 
soldiers,  but  never  by  the  slow  consum- 
ing of  your  days.  Therefore  the  city 
of  the  coming  time  shall  praise  no  sac- 
rificial life  that  forgets  the  Whole;  it 
shall  forbid  the  acceptance  of  such  sacrifice. 
Duty  shall  have  votaries  still,  but  no  longer 
slaves  or  victims;  the  lifelong  service  that 
bows  down  the  life  shall  no  more  be 
laden  upon  the  single  back;  all  shall  serve,  but 
none  be  another's  vampire.  In  the  good 
city  whoso  starves  himself  shall  be  held  the 
robber  of  the  commonwealth;  he  shall  clip 
gold  coinage.  Worse  shall  be  the  abettor  of 
that  starving  for  his  own  comfort.  In  the 
good  city  sacrifice  and  the  perfected  selfhood 
shall  draw  into  alliance  against  selfishness, 
by  which  conciliation  alone  all  lives  shall 
stand  Incorporate,  and  each  be  member  of 
the  other. 

Such  altruist  self-regard  the  healing  service 
seemed  first  to  have  established,  in  this,  as 


32  Domu0  Dolori0 

in  other  matters  of  high  moment  for  our 
kind,  a  guide  and  pioneer.  It  had  not 
crushed  down  selves,  but  kept  them  upstand- 
ing with  their  human  joys  and  hopes;  it 
forced  upon  them  but  one  thing,  this  way  of 
civic  living.  To  all  who  submitted  to  its 
law,  it  taught  the  good  athlete's  rule,  to 
endure  hard  days  not  for  their  own  gain  but 
for  the  common  victory.  So  from  its  wis- 
dom and  their  obedience  arose  this  dignity 
of  glad  natures,  which  lavished  and  kept, 
which  sacrificed  and  withheld,  which  served 
and  yet  were  free.  In  a  community  thus 
finely  ordered  there  was  no  descent  to 
commonness;  before  the  clean  distinction  of 
it  vulgarity  could  not  live.  One  thought, 
those  who  devised  this  discipline  were  a  hun- 
dred marches  in  the  van  of  statesmen.  While 
such  wrought  to  combine  material  and  gross 
things,  these  better  politicians  had  pressed 
into  service  a  spiritual  force;  they  had  set 
actually  moving  the  one  power  that  regen- 
erates, the  confederated  will  for  good.  And 
we  of  Jeshurun's  sort  had  scarce  known  what 
they  did,  or  cared  to  know.  For  us,  theirs 
was  no  more  than  the  healing  business,  as  it 


Domu0  Dolorig  33 

might  be  one  of  many,  a  service  of  gain,  a 
retailing  craft  of  shopmen.  We  did  not 
think  of  them  as  exemplary  to  ministers  of 
State,  or  of  their  hospitals  as  schools  of  civic 
life.  We  thought  of  our  ease  and  sleekness; 
we  were  animally  blind. 


IV 


OF  all  the  offices  which  illustrate  this 
good  citizenship,  that  of  the  Night 
Sister  touches  imagination  most. 
For  all  sufferers,  there  is  about  her  a  charm 
of  mystery,  coming  to  her  from  the  shadowy 
spaces  which  are  her  province  and  the  solemn 
hours  in  which  she  reigns.  To  the  exalted 
fancy  of  the  sleepless,  as  they  watch  her  mov- 
ing to  and  fro  amid  their  pains,  she  becomes 
the  most  tutelary  of  mortal  beings.  She 
breathes  communicable  strength  when  in 
the  dead  night  life  pauses  in  the  veins,  and 
men  fear.  In  the  hour  when  hope  ebbs  far 
she  comes  among  them  for  a  sign  of  rallying 
and  new  resistance.  The  eyes  of  the  fearful 
turn  to  her;  she  seems  the  column  upon  which 
their  unsure  fates  are  stayed.  Night  after 
night  she  looks  on  mournful  things  and  is  still 
strong;  she  has  seen  the  worst  that  man 
endures  and  yet  has  comfort;  therefore  men 
trust  her.  It  is  she  who  puts  to  flight  sur- 
rendering thoughts,  fans  courage  to  its  last 
34 


Domu0  Doloti0  35 

flicker,  and  rejoices  with  the  indomitable  soul. 
To  those  in  anguish  she  is  the  source  of 
blessed  remedy;  she  gives  or  withholds  the 
drug  that  brings  forgetfulness  and  soothes 
the  nerve  of  pain.  She  stands  between  the 
living  and  the  dead;  she  is  the  friend  of  the 
departing;  telling  them  their  time,  and  com- 
ing to  speed  them  on  their  last  journey. 
Though  sometimes  near  to  breaking,  she 
holds  out  to  the  morning,  keeping  to  the  end 
for  others  the  illusion  of  that  columnar 
strength.  For  all  this,  her  reward  seems 
nothing  but  a  banishment  from  earth's  de- 
lights :  this  is  Persephone,  snatched  from  the 
upper  day  to  walk  the  halls  of  Dis,  forfeit- 
ing the  sun  and  the  meadows  and  the  large 
air.  But  to  have  been  the  good  genius  of 
many  sufferers  is  great  exchange;  the  con- 
sciousness of  it  is  her  true  reward,  and  the 
music  of  the  thought  her  nocturne. 

The  Sister  of  one's  own  experience,  the 
Noctiluca  of  one's  night,  was  not  unworthy 
of  this  obscure  great  office;  she  was  a  brave 
human  soul.  Dark,  and  of  no  commanding 
stature,  she  seemed  passing  tall  when  she 
stood  with  her  hands  folded  before  her  and 


36  Domu0  Dolotis 

looked  you  down  like  a  centurion.  The 
broad  white  cap  at  first  lent  to  her  face  an 
aspect  of  demureness  which  knowledge  soon 
belied;  this  was  no  Quakeress,  though  of  a 
quiet  manner;  the  eyes  told  that,  and  the  lips 
not  fashioned  for  solemnity.  She  was  con- 
fident in  bearing,  proudly  professional,  sure 
of  herself  and  mistress  of  event.  She 
could  be  imperative  as  fate,  and  never 
raise  her  voice  to  prove  it.  It  seemed  there 
was  little  in  life,  from  its  beginning  to  its  end, 
which  could  now  impress  her;  she  had  seen 
so  much  of  mortal  things.  Of  death  she 
could  speak  with  an  indifference  which  might 
at  first  repel;  but  then  she  knew  this  enemy 
well,  and  had  often  beaten  him,  fighting  from 
the  evening  to  the  morning  light.  She  loved 
children,  and  now  and  then  would  bring  them 
in  on  her  arm  to  greet  you  with  the  day,  most 
often  a  boy  with  hair  fit  for  a  child  angel, 
but  under  it  a  blanched  face  of  which  she 
knew,  but  did  not  tell,  the  omens,  letting  the 
day's  sun  shine  on  it,  and  a  few  bright  mo- 
ments fly.  For  herself  she  would  appear  to 
have  no  great  joy  of  living,  being,  one  might 
guess,  of  independent  habit,  not  companion- 


Domus  Dolotis  37 

able  with  all;  it  might  be  that  there  lay  be- 
fore her  no  clear  and  happy  prospect,  nor  was 
the  present  ever  kindly,  for  she  who  could 
charm  sleep  to  other  pillows  could  not  per- 
suade it  to  her  own.  A  sense  of  having 
failed  in  life  seemed  to  be  growing  upon  her; 
with  feint  of  cynicism  she  would  proclaim 
that  she  could  no  longer  keep  a  conscience. 
But  while  the  words  were  on  her  lips  she 
would  be  doing  with  her  own  hands  what  she 
might  well  have  left  to  others,  or  else  a  work 
beyond  strict  duty;  and  the  eye  of  fancy  could 
not  see  this  Sister  arraigned  at  any  Judgment 
on  the  charge  of  conscience  lost.  She  had 
received  an  education  of  some  range,  studied 
the  times,  and  was  humorous  in  the  observa- 
tion of  men  and  things.  Her  coming  on  duty 
as  the  light  began  to  fail  was  often  the  day's 
event,  and  always  eagerly  expected.  She 
came  from  breakfasting  in  the  summer  dusk 
with  colleagues  who  supped ;  for  every  hospi- 
tal has  Laestrygonian  ways,  and  those  who 
start  out  to  begin  their  toil  meet  those  who 
have  ended  and  return.  It  was  the  patient's 
fortune  that  she  broke  upon  a  grey  hour 
like  a  belated  sun  with  a  kind  of  morning 


349006 


38  Domu0  Dolotis 

freshness,  and  cleared  all  clouds  away.  It 
was  impossible  to  make  her  see  her  merit,  for 
she  distrusted  praise;  and  to  have  succeeded 
might  have  robbed  her  of  a  main  pleasure,  to 
jest  at  destiny.  You  doubted  if  she  loved 
set  forms  of  prayer;  but  if  to  work  is  indeed 
to  pray,  the  labours  of  her  nights  were  lauds 
and  matins. 

Through  knowledge  of  such  natures 
dawned  vision  of  a  new  power  on  the 
earth,  womanhood  under  discipline,  which 
moved  the  imagination  the  more  because 
short  sight  had  looked  for  a  less  thing.  It 
was  as  if  you  had  thought  to  see  uncertain 
windmill's  work,  fitful  as  the  light  breeze  that 
turns  the  sails,  but  coming  near,  had  found  a 
force  in  majesty  of  function,  undeviating,  im- 
mutable, intense,  so  that  you  stopped  short, 
first  surprised,  and  then  ashamed  of  having 
marvelled.  For  to  have  expected  any  other 
issue  was  seen  now  to  be  more  than  lack  of 
vision;  it  touched  upon  disgrace.  But  if  the 
finding  of  strangeness  brought  no  credit,  It 
doubled  the  delight,  now  that  at  last,  out 
of  due  time,  one  saw.  Assuredly  It  was 
matter    for   rejoicing   to   see    suddenly   be- 


Domus  Dolotis  39 

fore  one's  eyes,  in  the  wood  of  larger, 
louder  birds,  the  phoenix  on  the  bough. 
Here,  proud  in  a  maturity  of  strength,  was 
that  in  which  the  centuries  had  not  beheved, 
the  woman  under  accepted  law,  and  glad  in 
its  severity.  Natures  deemed  weak  were  dis- 
covered steel-like  in  endurance,  a  temperable 
metal;  spirits  not  called  to  the  severer  loyal- 
ties were  trusty  as  sworn  men.  At  this  con- 
futation of  misgivings,  there  was  drawn  a 
deep,  glad  breath;  the  mind  knew  that  it  had 
travelled,  it  looked  over  a  new  world,  it 
hailed  the  broader  view. 

Who,  before  such  example,  should  fear 
the  new  comradeship  of  the  sexes?  The 
past  seemed  now  ridiculous  in  timidity  and 
blindness,  dreading  advent  of  Souls  unsexed; 
and  those  children  of  the  present  who  also 
feared,  were  as  creatures  facing  backwards, 
beings  heraldically  regardant,  medieeval,  not 
of  our  age  or  prospect.  For  sex  is  changeless 
in  the  soul  as  in  the  body;  it  is  of  an  unalter- 
able and  proud  severalty.  And  as  for  fol- 
lies attending  change,  what  great  matter  that 
when  the  tether  was  first  cut  there  had  been 
riot   of   careering   in    some   fields,   a   light- 


40  Domu0  Dolon0 

heeled  extravagance,  as  of  colts  unloosed? 
All  this  was  but  a  harmless  phase  of  chal- 
lenge and  natural  rebounding.  The  scene 
of  the  first  foolishness  was  long  left  behind; 
already  the  advance  was  over  the  hills  and 
many  leagues  away.  War  had  but  hastened 
a  pledged  gift  of  peace.  In  a  time  of  stress 
woman  had  transmuted  to  her  use  virtues  till 
now  accounted  male,  subtly  according  them 
with  her  own;  wholly  unmanlike,  she  had  put 
on  manfulness.  In  what  hare's  breast  might 
such  a  vision  rouse  alarm?  Because  Eve 
delved  need  Adam  spin?  Rather  it  must  re- 
joice all  wisdom,  suggesting  complementary 
change,  when  man  in  his  turn  should  follow 
with  like  transmutations.  Could  he  but 
take  with  similar  art  into  his  nature  such 
qualities  of  woman  as  should  give  him  more 
grace  while  yet  to  the  life's  core  male;  could 
he  but  refine  his  proper  metal,  leaving  it  all 
its  stubborn  strength,  but  giving  it  a  new 
spring  and  a  new  sheen,  from  this  refining 
what  undreamed  regeneration  might  not  come 
soon  upon  the  world,  from  this  unestranging 
but  supreme  divergence  what  noble  poise  of 
mind. 


V 


BY  aid  of  friends  matchless  in  the  fifth 
Work  of  Mercy,  by  help  of  books,  by 
expatiations  of  a  mind  freed  from 
cares,  the  days  that  escaped  pain  flowed  with 
a  benign  and  healing  sameness;  monotony  is 
sometimes  a  good  medicine.  They  might 
not  be  described  as  usual  days  of  wards, 
since  there  was  privacy,  with  bending  of 
rigidities,  and  certain  rules  relaxed.  Yet 
they  were  at  no  such  great  remove.  All  who 
lay  here  were  as  points  in  one  circumference; 
one  durance  fettered  all;  we  were  one  com- 
munity, through  windows,  walls  and  echoing 
spaces  not  seldom  audible  to  one  another. 
The  sun  being  up,  the  rested  human  creature, 
bathed  and  kempt,  renewed  the  ancient  hope 
which  dawn  awakens,  and  with  it  the  will  to 
live  out  another  day,  to  insist  with  Provi- 
dence, which,  after  youth  is  past,  is  not  the 
least  miracle  of  incarnation.  The  labours  of 
the  night  service  drew  to  their  close;  sounds 
multiplied  through  the  house;  the  energy 
41 


42  Domu0  Dolon0 

that  ebbed  with  the  waning  darkness  turned 
now  with  buoyant  flood,  as  those  quickened  by 
sleep  came  back  to  duty;  the  whole  nature  re- 
ceived the  influent  freshness.  There  was 
bed-making  now,  then  breakfasting,  no  light 
matter  when  the  head  was  lower  than  the 
body,  and  you  must  eat  against  gravity. 
During  the  adventure  the  Day  Sister  would 
come  with  letters,  and  news  of  the  two  hemi- 
spheres, her  face  bland  as  the  morning  and 
dissipant  of  clouds.  And  now  behold  the 
wardmaid,  hurled  upon  her  task  by  some  fa- 
natic faith  in  haste,  a  character  after  the 
heart  of  Dickens,  and  charged  with  the  hu- 
mours of  his  sanguine  town.  Each  day  would 
mar  her  hope  to  achieve  at  a  single  onset;  for 
she  was  a  Figaro  in  the  house;  always,  when 
her  worst  impended,  some  distant  call  sound- 
ing, she  would  run  forth  declamatory,  behind 
her  all  movable  things  moved,  all  invertible 
things  inverted.  Then  you  must  lie  helpless 
amid  the  disjected  elements  of  your  world,  all 
that  you  longed  for  out  of  reach,  all  unde- 
sired  things  at  hand,  till  in  her  good  time  she 
would  plunge  back,  and  at  last  her  chaas  end. 
On   her   withdrawal,    your   nurse    succeeds, 


Domu0  Dolori0  43 

using  economy  of  deftest  movements;  she 
takes  a  temperature  and  fills  up  a  chart, 
commenting  in  a  low  clear  voice;  she  or- 
ders, she  disposes,  calm  mistress  of  your 
diurnal  fate.  Before  she  vanishes  in  her 
turn,  she  brings  back  all  your  exiled  flowers, 
roses  in  bowls,  irises,  carnations,  giving  each 
group  some  care ;  these  bright  lives  also  must 
have  tending.  The  colour  and  invading 
fragrance  hold  you  in  delight  awhile ;  you  let 
sense  hover  over  this  perfection  of  pure, 
serene  existence.  Sated  at  last,  distracted 
from  the  charm,  you  read,  you  write,  you 
pause  to  enjoy  pure  vacancy  of  mind. 

The  door  opens  as  if  with  deference. 
Matron  enters,  episcopally  clad  in  purple, 
making  visitation  of  her  diocese,  an  erect 
small  figure,  full  of  life,  commanding  a  wit 
perilous,  perhaps,  to  such  as  should  be  care- 
less with  its  edge.  Aware  of  her  omnipo- 
tence, you  are  rejoiced  that,  transparently, 
her  will  is  good.  Sometimes,  as  she  stands 
at  the  bed's  foot,  judging  events  and  men, 
you  picture  her  among  EcclesiazuscB,  giving 
an  honourable  House  her  mind.  But  you 
curb  the  fancy;  matrons  are  august;  they  are 


44  Domu0  Doloris 

for  awe,  not  for  imaginations.  She  passes 
on  to  the  large  ward  down  the  passage;  the 
Influence  of  her  vivacity  dies;  a  languor  gains 
you  with  the  silence.  You  lie  and  watch 
white  butterflies  flickering  outside  the  open 
window,  over  ground  on  which  your  eyes  have 
never  rested.  You  look  across  to  the  roof 
of  the  opposite  ward,  seeking  on  the  tiles  the 
shadow  of  the  chimney  which  serves  you  as  a 
dial;  you  gaze  higher  yet  at  your  one  square 
of  sky,  your  treasured  share  of  the  heavens, 
to  plunge  sight  in  the  lucent  blue.  Azure 
is  colour  of  dreams;  perception  of  it  draws  to 
them,  whether  they  haunt  night  or  day.  The 
measure  of  a  poem  to  Blue  Dream  stirs  in 
the  doorway  of  your  mind;  It  lures  with  half- 
forgotten  cadences  and  Imagery  of  oblivion, 
dim  forms,  tranced  folds  of  air,  sleep-flowers 
with  drooping  heads. 

You  float  too  fast  to  the  Fortunate  Isles. 
Some  jealous  spirit  of  Reality  is  suddenly  at 
the  helm;  with  a  wrench  your  course  is 
changed.  For  as  one  might  rip  a  fabric 
down,  a  boy's  voice  rends  the  air,  trying  each 
note  in  the  scale  of  agony;  you  are  widely 
awake   once   more.     That   spirit   has    done 


Domus;  Dolon0  45 

well;  blue  dreams  seduce;  it  Is  good  not  to 
forget  that  this  is  the  house  of  pain.  You 
know  the  story  of  the  broken  elbow  now  be- 
ing flexed  again,  the  old  tale  of  stairs  and 
banisters;  a  slide,  a  swerve,  a  fall,  a  fracture. 
You  envisage  the  small  boy  fast  held  by  con- 
straining hands;  you  see  him  quiver  and  start 
like  a  caught  bird.  You  remember  how  once 
a  starling  felt  under  your  own  hand,  en- 
tangled in  a  garden  net,  the  warmth  of  the 
slight  creature,  its  surprising  strength  as  it 
struggled  in  a  frenzy  of  fear  in  liberating 
fingers.  The  boy  must  feel  almost  like  that, 
as  warm,  as  fragile,  as  impotently  strong. 
Your  heart  goes  out  to  him:  something  you 
know  of  those  discruciating  flexures.  But 
there  is  no  help  save  by  this  pain;  you  fall 
back  on  the  philosophy  of  the  wards.  Pain 
is  for  all ;  we  take  up  the  lots  that  fall  to  us. 
His  turn  now,  the  next  time  yours ;  to-morrow 
you  shall  bite  upon  your  lip  while  he  eats 
strawberries.  All  must  take  the  cruelties  of 
mercy;  all  in  their  turn  are  foundered  and 
sucked  down  in  the  dark  whirlpool ;  yet  some- 
how most  emerge,  they  are  rendered  to  the 
light,  to  smile  once  more.     Nevertheless,  de- 


46  Domu0  Dolon0 

spite  that  stern  philosophy,  It  Is  hard  that  for 
heedless  youth  there  should  be  shaken  from 
the  urn  the  lot  for  this  exceeding  torment. 
Gradually  the  cries  pierce  less;  they  die  into 
low  moans;  these  also  cease.  You  hear  the 
Sister,  whose  task  that  torturing  was,  lament 
the  need  of  It  outside  your  door.  You  know 
her  words  sincere;  there  Is  no  cruelty  In  her 
nature.  You  know  also  the  strength  of  her 
hands. 

Noon  Is  now  come ;  soon  a  second  fast,  un- 
wittingly achieved,  Is  broken.  Follows  fresh 
ritual  of  laving;  then  more  languor  of  ease. 
But  again  Reality  disturbs  bliss.  It  Is  your 
doctor  now,  loosed,  as  It  were,  upon  you,  with 
a  staff-nurse  at  his  heels.  You  give  them 
drowsy  welcome;  you  are  in  no  mood  to  be 
pulled  or  shifted,  or  made  a  spectacle  for 
their  science.  But  to-day  you  are  only  ques- 
tioned and  reprieved.  You  look  contentedly 
at  their  retreating  shapes;  now,  at  a  back 
view,  they  seem  what  they  are,  great  people. 
You  determine  next  time  to  receive  them  will- 
ingly; you  feel  contrition.  You  know  by  now 
that,  If  your  case  is  common,  the  sick  have 
need  to  spend  much  time  repenting,  the  per- 


Domu0  Dolon'g  47 

versity  of  Adam's  children  being  deep-fixed 
in  them.  Too  helpless  to  commit  offences, 
they  omit  In  double  measure,  and  stand  soon 
in  such  arrears  of  virtue  that  there  are  sin- 
ners of  a  positive  kind  wanting  absolution 
less.  You  sink  deeper  in  the  pillows,  feel- 
ing after  loose  threads  of  dream;  all  slip 
from  your  grasp.  Life  dwindles,  a  shore 
left  behind;  here  is  the  open  sea.  After  you 
know  not  what  wanderings,  you  are  recalled 
with  a  start,  as  if  a  voice  hailed  over  the 
waters;  a  surgeon  speaks  without,  for  whom 
a  bad  case  waits.  Instinctively  you  begin 
listening  for  the  sound  of  soft-tyred  wheels; 
it  comes,  light  as  a  rustling  of  grasses;  scarce 
perceived,  it  is  already  lost.  You  can  see, 
as  if  no  wall  rose  between,  the  supine  shape 
with  face  upturned,  borne  onward  where  that 
wonder-worker  stands  prepared  in  the  white 
place,  with  white  attendant  forms  about  him. 
A  door  swings  on  its  hinge;  you  hear  no 
more.  This  time  the  threads  are  found;  you 
are  bedrowsed;  you  are  gone  from  con- 
sciousness as  surely  as  that  victim  under  the 
ether-fumes.  Strange  forces  use  you  also, 
of  which  you  know  little  as  he  of  those  chirur- 


48  Domus!  Dolotis 

gic  doings.  You  are  gone  far,  floating  where 
the  papyrus  waves  by  Anapo;  you  have 
crossed  the  tragic  harbour;  you  stand  under 
the  quarry  walls  where  the  Athenians  pined 
for  home.  But  the  yellow  rock  darkens  and 
closes  in;  it  is  once  more  the  familiar  wall  of 
olive-green  on  which  the  images  of  your 
solace  are  all  projected.  You  wake  more 
fully;  you  must  have  slept  long;  by  the 
shadows  on  the  roof  it  is  half-past  three. 
The  convoy  coming  back  must  have  aroused 
you;  from  words  exchanged  as  it  goes  by, 
you  learn  that  there  has  been  success.  The 
supine  form  returns  on  the  light  wheels;  you 
know  that  It  neither  sees,  nor  hears,  nor 
dreams.  It  is  but  a  frame  or  shell,  with  all 
that  makes  humanity  still  subtracted;  it  will 
not  enjoy  your  happy  fortune;  the  soul  will 
come  back  to  it  in  pain.  The  surgeon  strides 
off;  the  rhythm  of  his  feet  betrays  the  alert 
undreaming  nature.  Before  the  last  echo 
dies,  he  has  leaped  into  his  car;  he  steers 
through  traffic  to  some  fresh  endeavour. 
You  fall  to  thinking  of  the  trenchant  life  to 
which  all  knots  are  Gordian;  here  is  one 
who  knows  no  faltering,  but  cuts  down  on 


Domuis  Dolorig  49 


the  mischief,  making  clean  end.  If  ever  he 
rests,  his  must  be  the  demigod's  content  for 
mighty  labours  done,  Antaeus  lifted  off  his 
feet,  the  stalls  of  Augeas  cleansed.  Good 
speed  to  him,  you  wish,  and  a  hydra's  head 
lopped  every  day. 

A  nurse  comes,  bringing  tea.  She  has 
seen  these  wonders  of  dexterity;  she  tells  of 
them  as  an  enthusiast  for  a  game  will  recount 
heroic  feats.  You  like  the  zeal;  as  for  the 
subject,  such  themes  are  natural  here;  they 
spoil  no  appetites.  Like  the  hero,  she 
hastens  forth;  all  hasten  here;  you  sigh  a 
moment  over  your  helplessness.  But  her 
zeal  has  served  to  remind  you  of  a  task;  you 
begin  making  dressings,  to  propitiate  your 
conscience,  and  a  taskmistress  who,  if  that 
is  left  undone  which  should  have  been  done, 
will  ask  full  reason  why.  The  pleasure  of 
handiwork  grows  on  you,  and  you  lose  count 
of  time;  more  than  an  hour  is  gone;  the  cool 
of  evening  gains  on  the  day's  heat.  There 
is  now  more  ritual  with  water;  you  eat  for 
the  last  time.  A  friend  comes  in  and  talks 
awhile,  a  man  of  inches  in  the  stature  of  mind 
and  body;  in  both  he  finely  overshadows,  a 


50  Domu$  Dolotis 

tree  richly  laden;  at  hint  or  question,  as  at 
the  shaking  of  a  bough,  he  showers  down 
ripeness.  At  his  departure  you  sort  and 
store  the  fallen  fruit;  earth  seems  a  good 
orchard  yet.  Twilight  now  draws  on;  the 
petals  which  the  flowers  have  dropped  shine 
whiter  upon  the  darkening  floor.  Without, 
young  nurses,  in  the  free  air  at  last,  are 
watering  plants;  their  laughter  floats  in,  a 
therapeutic  sound.  In  the  sky  there  is  an 
imminence  of  stars  yet  undiscerned.  A  lamp 
shines  from  the  opposite  ward,  light  upon 
twilight,  golden  as  ripe  corn  on  the  blue. 
The  nurses  hasten  in  under  the  wall,  their 
heads  alone  visible  in  uneven  motion,  passing 
like  white  moths  along  a  hedgerow;  the  music 
of  their  laughter  is  cut  off  by  a  closing  door.- 
And  now  your  square  of  sky  changes  from 
blue  to  sable,  and  puts  forth  a  splendid  star; 
only  when  a  cloud  floats  over  it,  can  you  suffer 
drawn  blinds  and  any  meaner  light.  But 
with  their  drawing,  comes  pleasure  of  se- 
questering and  deep  peace;  it  is  the  last  of 
day.  The  Night  Sister  looks  in  to  see  that 
all  is  well;  she  smooths  your  pillows,  laughs 


Domu0  Doloris  51 

over  little  happenings  reported,  and  is  gone 
to  harder  work.  The  world  seems  one  great 
pillow  smoothed  for  weariness;  almost  per- 
suaded that  such  indeed  it  is,  you  fall  asleep. 


VI 


SUCH  days  brought  large  amends  of 
fate;  they  had  their  intrinsic  beauty, 
and  beyond  it  the  attraction  of  the  un- 
foreseen, which  from  the  first  touched  them 
like  winter  sunlight,  doubly  enjoyed  for 
strangeness.  For  it  had  been  a  fixed  belief 
that  the  soul  of  a  wrecked  body  must  als( 
be  dejected,  and  haunt  the  same  drear  shore. 
But  when  the  body  is  laid  motionless,  yet 
often  released  from  pain,  the  soul  comes  as 
near  as  may  be  to  existence  in  herself  alone. 
She  is  set  free.  She  goes  unincarnate  if 
she  will,  moved  by  her  own  action,  perfectly. 
It  is  not  she  who  is  made  nursling,  but  this 
trunk  which  she  inhabits;  none  may  nurse 
the  soul.  Now  she  may  know  exquisite  and 
lustral  hours;  she  may  be  hearth  to  empyreal 
fires;  joy  of  zeniths  may  stream  for  her  sole 
delight.  In  truth,  the  ill  hap  of  the  body 
may  prove  the  chance  of  chances  for  the  soul. 
In  such  deliverance  the  spirit  seemed  now 
daily  to  soar.  It  rose  like  the  lark  towards 
52 


Domus!  Dolon0  53 

the  sunburst,  bathing  in  floods  of  dawn,  for- 
getting all  old  and  stale  recurrences,  and  the 
voice  of  the  sad  Preacher,  with  his  dirge  of 
ever  rounding  winds  and  suns  that  make 
nothing  new.  All  things  were  new:  earth, 
heaven  and  their  divine  conjuncture. 

It  would  sometimes  happen  that  when  the 
soul  was  just  alighted  and,  as  it  were,  still 
quivering  with  joy  of  flight,  friends  would 
come  in  before  you  might  collect  your  wits, 
with  a  demeanour  set  to  pity.  Then  there 
began  a  comedy  of  errors  in  which  apparent 
parts  were  interchanged;  we  wandered  in 
illusion;  the  moon  seemed  to  shine.  For  the 
pitiers  became  the  pitied,  and  objects  un- 
awares of  a  compassion  like  their  own;  while 
they  grieved  for  you  that  you  were  in  such 
evil  case,  you  grieved  for  them  that  they  were 
in  any  other.  For  at  that  moment  your  state 
was  in  your  own  sight  royal,  and  to  be  drawn 
from  it  by  a  condolence,  however  beautiful, 
a  descent  by  the  climax  of  absurdity.  Their 
artful  cheerfulness  was  the  wrong  thing  to 
find  after  such  soaring;  you  wished  to  tell 
them,  but  found  no  words;  the  inversion  of 
the    customary    was    too    strange,    and   un- 


54  Domu0  Dolotis! 

interpretable  in  your  languor.  You  could 
not  even  seek  to  end  one  paradox  by 
another,  and  use  on  them  the  Stoic  argument 
that  this  pity  proved  them  sick,  being  itself  a 
disease  which  the  wise  mind  avoids.  You 
might  not  say  compassion  was  disease,  when 
It  shone  all  luminous  before  you,  a  flame  of 
the  soul,  a  grace.  And  as  for  the  bare  truth, 
it  should  never  convince  in  such  environment. 
How  tell  them  tales  of  Ariel,  with  the  sur- 
geon's cockpit  not  ten  yards  away?  The 
massive  contradiction  of  that  neighbourhood 
should  cast  doubt  on  any  truth.  Thus  it  was 
that  encountering  compassions  passed  like 
moonbeams,  to  and  fro,  across,  aslant,  astray, 
spreading  unreal  light.  You  were  glad  of 
all  these  generous  hearts,  yet  wished  them 
less  rich  in  pity,  for,  unobtruded  though  it 
was,  and  delicate.  It  vexed  your  sensibility; 
you  had  borne  all  In  this  sort  that  you  could 
endure.  Yet,  without  full  reason  given,  to 
ask  that  It  should  cease  would  have  seemed 
outrage,  or  a  false  pretence  to  fortitude;  the 
dilemma  was  too  high  of  horn  for  a  lame 
mind.  You  therefore  bore  as  best  you 
might,   with   show  of   gratefulness,   settling 


Domu0  Dolotis  55 

down  to  hear  what  they  would  say,  as  men 
compose  themselves  before  a  recitation,  when 
the  reciter  is  well  liked,  but  the  subject  un- 
desired. 

Always  they  would  recite  events,  which 
in  the  strange  judgment  of  the  healthy  are 
the  one  food  for  the  sick.  But  you  had 
soared  out;  you  had  tasted  the  eventless;  you 
desired  not  Canterbury  Tales,  but  chorus 
of  Aristophanes  or  Shelley.  To  do  them 
pleasure  you  feigned  hunger;  but  this  was 
not  your  nourishment.  A  consciousness 
of  arrogance  in  your  passivity  now  oppressed, 
and  the  long-drawn  feint  exhausted;  but  in 
your  indolence  there  was  no  help ;  they  must 
say  on,  and  you  give  ear,  till  the  energy  of 
one  or  other  failed.  By  implication,  they 
were  slighting  that  which  you  treasured  most ; 
your  ranged,  identic  days,  each  behind  each 
in  their  clean  bareness,  were  desolate  ridges 
in  their  sight.  They  did  not  know  the  dunes 
towards  El-Hyza  by  the  sea-village  of  Tor, 
of  which  a  rare  traveller  tells  that  though 
they  seem  mute  and  dead,  they  ring  under  the 
feet  with  a  sound  like  after-chime  of  bells. 
And  how  should  you  persuade  that  the  bare 


56  Domu0  Dolon'g 

days  now  traversed  gave  likewise  a  deep 
music  forth?  Were  these  your  friends  but 
fresh  out  of  your  clouds,  and  you  in  your 
turn  out  of  their  earth-borne  cars,  you  never 
had  believed.  Therefore  you  held  your 
peace,  and  let  them  tell  as  they  would.  Upon 
a  day,  when  there  was  one  alone  with  you 
who  would  have  understood  how  dunes  ring, 
you  made  ready  to  unfold  the  causes  of  your 
peace.  But  at  the  point  of  confidence,  some 
trivial  happening  thrust  itself  between  re- 
solve and  speech;  the  rare  occasion  passed. 
The  incongruous  is  mortal  to  confessions;  it 
kills  through  any  avenue  of  sense,  through 
hearing,  sight  or  touch,  dealing  impartial 
blows;  it  may  come  in  a  vibration  or  upon 
an  air;  a  draught  may  blow  away  avowal, 
a  tinkling  be  curfew  to  an  inward  fire.  So 
now,  the  noise  of  some  indifferent  thing 
broken  drove  back  the  issuing  words.  That 
night  repentance  fell  on  you,  that  you  had 
let  yourself  be  stayed  for  din  of  a  crock 
shattered;  you  lay  in  a  hair  shirt,  you  were 
bound  in  bandages  of  hair. 

The  present  ecstasies  of  the  free  soul  were 
not  as  her  escapes  in  former  times ;  they  were 


Domu0  Doloris!  57 

perceived  other  in  kind.  In  the  old  days, 
she  fled  out  disdainful  or  oppressed  into  lone 
space,  wandering  purposeless  on  strange 
marches  of  existence  where  the  imminent 
never  befel,  where  the  promise  was  unful- 
filled, where  there  was  no  clear  utterance  of 
sound  or  light  or  colour,  but  absence,  and  the 
mere  reprieve  from  life.  But  now  flight 
was  short  and  sunward,  urged  by  a  purpose 
which  gradually  grew  clear.  That  which  the 
soul  now  sought  was  not  ease  bought  by 
evasion,  but  new  strength  in  light,  which  she 
would  bring  back  and  impart;  she  had  no 
longer  any  loathing  of  return,  as  once,  when 
the  Sirens  sang,  and  she  burned  to  shed  the 
body,  to  have  deliverance,  to  cross  the  bounds 
of  the  defiled  earth  no  more.  Now  she  was 
eager  to  return;  she  had  no  hatred  of  the 
body  or  its  yoke,  but  a  new  desire  to  serve 
and  save  it;  for  in  some  way  it  seemed  no 
longer  the  outcast  of  creation,  but  worthy 
to  be  loved,  and  of  her  kindred.  The  great 
human  principle  of  law  was  suddenly  applied 
in  this  relation,  that  rights  and  duties  co- 
extend;  she  discovered,  half  troubled,  half 
amazed,  that  bodies  have  rights  and  souls 


Domu0  Dolon0 


duties.  Souls  too  must  serve,  and  keep  the 
law  of  kind;  they  also  are  involved  in  human 
clay.  For  no  life  is  there  any  utter  freedom ; 
all  that  is  depends,  all  that  is  done  is  inter- 
acted. The  body  seemed  no  longer  patib- 
ular  and  born  for  scourging,  but  rather  a 
thing  of  dignity  and  greatness  which  it 
was  her  part  to  draw  upward  and  unfold. 
Her  very  existence  might  be  given  for  that 
duty,  her  ruin  ordained  for  its  neglect,  were 
the  high  charge  betrayed.  It  might  be  that 
they  two  were  bound  not  transiently,  but  a^ 
ways,  to  remain  incorporate  and  animate  to- 
gether through  changes  unimagined,  refining 
and  taking  fineness,  blending  life  physical  and 
spiritual,  until  they  were  wholly  implicate 
and  made  one  in  a  single  perfect  substance. 
It  seemed  to  her  now  that  only  so  might  any 
goal  be  reached  or  any  Judgment  undergone. 
Without  this  strange  associate  of  her  for- 
tune, transmuted  and  made  purer  by  her  toil, 
were  it  through  a  thousand  weary  changes, 
she  should  reach  no  shore  of  light,  she  should 
never  crown  her  voyage. 

Thus,  in  a  moment,  a  conception  of  life 
triumphed  which  had  been  despised  in  former 


Domu0  Doloris  59 

years.  And  there  was  not  only  acceptance 
by  the  mind;  the  truth  of  it  seemed  to  be  felt 
in  the  whole  contexture  of  the  being.  Pulvis 
et  umbra:  the  two  constituents  of  man  re- 
mained, but  the  lover  of  the  shadow  now 
confessed  the  dust.  The  influence  of  the 
house  of  pain  had  first  turned  the  heart 
this  way;  the  sacrifice  here  made  for  the  brute 
flesh,  the  strong  devotion  ceaselessly  given, 
had  made  of  this  carcass  a  new  thing.  The 
whole  nature  rejoiced  in  a  conciliated  life;  a 
visionary  sight  now  played  over  it,  foresee- 
ing transfusions  of  the  low  and  high  until 
there  should  be  at  last  integral,  essential 
change.  One  had  at  these  times  the  happy 
conceit  of  youth  again,  which  in  gaiety  of 
heart  bids  reason  station  where  fancy  scarce 
can  fly.  A  lightness  and  elation  came  to 
thought,  unknown  since  those  Icarian  years. 


VII 

IN  times  of  weakness  old  habits  of  mind 
will  often  return  out  of  the  past  fresh  as 
if  never  intermitted.  In  youth  you 
had  followed  the  psychologists,  charmed  by 
their  magisterial  talk;  now,  making  observa- 
tions upon  yourself,  you  missed  the  precise 
terms  of  their  science.  You  seemed  to  re- 
member definitions  of  great  craft,  and  knit 
so  close  that  nothing  might  pass  their  mesh. 
Books  of  the  precisians  were  therefore  pro- 
cured on  the  subject  of  the  embodied  soul. 
They  came,  and  were  perused;  great  was  the 
disillusion.  There  was  no  help  in  these 
grave  scrutineers  of  mind,  but  they  them- 
selves asked  help;  you  found  each  fall- 
ing back  on  the  old  words  and  making  them 
auxiliary  when  trouble  overtook  his  train  of 
polysyllables.  You  were  soon  thankful  not 
to  translate  experience  into  any  of  their 
systems.  All  was  a  maze  of  question-beg- 
ging term  and  paraphrase  which  led  you  from 
the  clear  into  the  gross,  from  the  Eleusinian 
60 


Domus  Dolotis  6i 

into  the  German  darkness.  For  what,  O 
Clarian  Apollo!  was  your  soul  now  become? 
A  centre  of  immediate  experience;  the  inner 
being  of  that  unity  of  which  the  body  is  the 
outward  expression;  a  coherence  of  spiritual 
becomings  and  befallings;  a  pure  Will  as 
apperception;  a  supersensual,  spaceless,  single 
existence.  And  what  your  body?  Vile 
mass  for  experiment  in  verbiage.  You  wan- 
dered in  a  labyrinth  of  terms,  falling  at  last 
with  joy  upon  an  aphorist  who  simply  styled 
it  the  inversion  of  the  soul.  And  as  for  the 
relation  of  the  two  elemental  partners,  it  was 
resolved  into  a  stiff  parallelism ;  from  a  mar- 
riage, it  was  become  a  course  of  never  meet- 
ing lines.  Thus,  after  copious  reading,  you 
were  left  asking  still  where  wisdom  should  in- 
deed be  found.  When  the  Greeks  called  the 
soul  a  butterfly,  or  a  flake  of  elemental  fire, 
or  a  quintessence,  or  a  harmony,  their  figures 
touched  reality  as  near  as  these  long  baggage- 
trains  of  language.  Plotlnus,  turning  an  old 
problem  outside  in,  averred  that  body  is  en- 
closed in  soul.  This  seemed  original,  at  least, 
and  as  true  as  other  divinations;  it  penetrated 
in  its  terseness;  your  inmost  sense  approved. 


62  Domu0  Doloti0 

You  recalled  a  distinction  somewhere  drawn 
between  the  imagination  which  grasps  the 
spirit  of  a  thing,  and  the  understanding  which 
dissects  the  body  of  a  fact;  the  Greeks  ex- 
pressed the  first,  the  new  psychologists  the 
second.  As  algebra,  their  formulae  impressed; 
they  posed  a  problem;  they  helped  thought. 
But,  like  algebra,  they  might  be  interpreted 
only  by  comparison  with  the  assumptions  on 
which  all  were  grounded;  and  whenever  the 
need  was  to  describe  vital  things,  verities  of 
the  breathing  self,  of  the  real  man  bat- 
tling out  his  war  before  fate,  then  this 
algebraic  scaffolding  collapsed  into  a  heap 
of  poles.  When  the  famous  among  these 
analysts  died,  and  their  lives  had  to  be 
written,  it  was  not  said  that  their  coherence 
of  psychic  life  was  great,  but  that  they  had 
great  souls.  It  was  confessed  thereby  that 
without  the  figurative  all-suggesting  word, 
no  personality  described  should  survive  a 
chapter,  or  find  its  way  into  a  single  natural 
heart.  Science  can  tell  our  bones;  she  can- 
not paint  our  portraits. 

So  you  returned  to  the  old  words,  soul  and 
body;   they   must   suffice    for   the    domestic 


Domug  Dolotig  63 

change  within,  where  now  began  a  new  com- 
mon life.  The  aloofness  of  the  former  dual- 
ism was  gone.  The  soul  was  angered  that 
she  had  lived  averse  from  that  which  she 
should  have  learned  to  love,  and  descending 
to  the  body,  as  Selene  to  the  slumbering 
Endymion,  knew  herself  not  too  high  for  a 
mortal  kindness.  The  body  might  no  longer 
be  disdained;  it  could  receive  ennoblement; 
already  she  was  aware  of  something  soul-like 
in  It,  and  agreeing  with  her  own  substance, 
by  which  it  should  be  helped  to  rise.  And 
now  there  came  a  splendour  into  life,  and 
a  knowledge  how  sense  might  warm  towards 
spirit  as  to  an  accostable  and  glad  power. 
Lamentable  in  their  dead  loss  of  joy  to  earth 
were  the  old  Castilian  rules  which  had  kept 
soul  from  common  life,  as  from  a  state  too 
base  for  her,  and  had  set  her  up  apart,  like 
some  Infanta,  in  whose  presence  none  might 
speak  a  human  thought.  Sad  also  were  the 
theories  which  had  too  much  feared  the  body 
as  a  power  of  evil,  and  esteemed  too  low  the 
pure  and  purifying  strength  of  soul;  and  all 
the  separating  and  repressive  days  were  sad, 
when  men  believed  that  through  this  part- 


64  Domu0  Doloris 

nership  the  soul  might  be  abased  but  the 
body  never  lifted  higher.  With  such  belief 
there  might  be  no  raising  of  the  flesh;  there 
had  been  immeasurable  waste  of  joy  and 
goodness.  But  now  the  soul  should  come  in 
and  out  on  ordinary  days,  no  longer  the  con- 
descending and  rare  visitant  at  feast-times; 
the  reprobate  body  should  be  changed,  look 
up  to  her  and  wear  to  her  fineness.  It 
seemed  strange  not  to  have  reached  this 
knowledge  long  ago;  but  it  is  general  to  man 
to  be  smitten  and  flung  into  his  best  wisdom. 
A  few  only  attain  to  it  without  the  like  rough 
prompting  in  the  stillness  of  clear  minds; 
most  need  a  violence  for  their  turning,  and 
not  till  they  have  suffered  it  does  an  after- 
clearness  come.  They  must  be  stunned  be- 
fore they  wake  to  sight;  there  must  first  fall 
on  them  a  didactic  and  memorable  blow.  In 
the  silence  of  the  house  of  pain  lie  many  who 
have  received  that  blow. 


VIII 

BUT  now,  with  an  assured  return  of 
strength,  the  mind  remembered, 
touched  by  shame,  that  for  more  than 
twenty  months  all  personal  life  had  ceased 
to  be  accounted;  the  nations  were  yet  in 
agony;  it  was  no  hour  for  self-regard.  The 
several  soul  was  indeed  nothing  now  for 
thought;  its  goings  were  impertinent  to  the 
vast  trend  of  things.  The  dark  tide  roared 
on,  and  little  psychic  fears  and  hopes  went 
from  cognizance  like  wisps  blown,  inappre- 
hensible for  smallness;  the  individual  ceased 
out  of  consciousness  and  was  annulled.  Mur- 
murs of  war  vexed  even  this  place  of  refuge; 
they  thrust  into  the  quietness,  the  moment 
happier  sounds  were  still.  War  weighed  up- 
on the  life  of  the  civil  wards.  None  had  less 
release  from  the  besieging  thought  of  it  than 
those  who  without  part  or  lot  lay  helpless. 
For  such  will  ponder  long  in  the  hours  when 
pain  is  sole  distraction;  their  minds  make 
weak  defence  and  are  swiftly  overrun.  The 
65 


66  Domu0  Dolotis 

cloud  which  had  been  the  background  of  all 
vision  drew  again  over  the  bright  sky;  no 
spirit  might  reach  up  to  joy;  the  shade  of 
universal  grief  descended.  There  might  be 
no  contemplation  now  but  of  the  general 
body  and  the  general  soul  in  their  affliction; 
and  in  a  misery  at  their  long  anguish,  the 
mind  dared  only  look  far  forward,  as  one 
who  goes  upon  a  striding  edge,  with  abyss 
on  either  side.  Yet  it  pleased  itself  with  the 
fancy  that  the  peoples  also,  after  this  shatter- 
ing, should  be  recovered  into  a  harmony  like 
the  small  single  nature.  It  wondered  how 
after  the  recovery  their  new  state  should  af- 
fect the  common  life;  and  above  all  whether 
it  should  be  a  preparation  for  that  everlast- 
ing peace,  the  passionate  world's  desire, 
which  quick-travelling  pens  now  promised. 
And  thus  that  ancient  dream  filled  yet  anoth- 
er mind,  driving  away,  after  its  wont,  all 
lesser  visions.  You  read  once  more  the 
theories  of  men  caught  up  in  the  splendour 
of  the  dream  till  their  sight  failed  in  discern- 
ment of  things  below.  You  followed  them 
with  joy  awhile,  as  they  pursued  this  happiest 
theme  of  seers.    The  hopes  which  they  raised 


Domu0  Dolon0  67 

were  fair  to  watch ;  like  birds  started  by  the 
traveller's  step,  they  flashed  glinting  wings. 
But  all  too  soon  it  seemed  that  the  best 
among  the  seers  were  as  tired  men  plan- 
ning holidays  in  far  lands  that  they 
should  never  tread;  anticipation  made 
their  hearts  too  young;  their  spirits  ran  ahead 
of  time.  You  had  just  learned  that  such  out- 
racing  is  forbidden  to  the  complete  human 
creature,  and  that  the  soul  must  trudge,  or 
ever  the  body  runs.  Less  lovable  were  pro- 
jectors of  a  nearer  sight,  who  by  prospectus 
duly  drawn  would  bring  Saturnian  days 
again;  in  these  the  quality  of  good  boyishness, 
which  pleased  at  the  first  reading,  passed  at 
the  second  into  puerility.  Seeking  exact  range, 
they  measured  distance  ill;  they  forgot  what 
every  marksman  should  know  well,  that 
things  seen  clearly  over  chasms  are  half  the 
world  away.  But  if,  one  thought,  we  must 
have  prophecy,  V'^irgil  had  finer  art  in  it  than 
Kant  or  Grotius;  he  painted  in  the  shadows, 
he  more  delicately  urged  the  doubt.  The 
world's  great  age  shall  come  again;  of  a  sure- 
ty it  shall  come.  Another  Tiphys  there  shall 
be ;  Argo  shall  sail  once  more ;  a  new  Achilles 


68  Domu0  Dolorig 

shall  find  another  Troy.  But  likewise  there 
shall  creep  in  vestiges  of  ancient  guile :  Pau- 
ca  tamen  suherunt  priscae  vestigia  fraudis. 
There  was  prophecy  in  that  line  also. 

In  short,  a  scrutiny  of  these  plans  evoked 
sighs:  here  was  too  sanguine  work;  here  were 
the  playbills  posted  and  the  theatre  unbuilt. 
How  should  an  outward  mechanism  avail, 
when  the  first  need  and  last  was  inward 
change,  change  absolute,  throughgoing,  irre- 
versible, change  in  the  very  seed  of  life,  com- 
pared with  which  the  foundation  or  undoing 
of  great  realms  were  but  a  simple  matter. 
Until  that  change  should  come,  all  else  was 
deceiving  shift  and  palliative,  fit  to  avert  war, 
but  not  to  end  it.  It  seemed  a  thing  almost 
for  tears,  this  change  being  scarce  begun,  that 
men  should  deem  themselves  prepared  for 
everlasting  peace.  For  the  plain  truth  is  that 
in  his  transience  and  imperfection  man  is 
incongruous  with  all  that  is  ever-during;  be- 
fore he  may  begin  to  consist  even  in  part 
with  the  eternal  upon  earth,  the  slow  and  nat- 
ural growth  of  ages  must  be  added  to  his 
stature.  The  very  best  among  the  peoples 
are  unworthy  yet  of  that  gift;  the  noblest  of 


Domug  Dolotig  69 

them  are  errant,  punishable  folk,  subject  to 
many  passions,  spurred  into  dark  ways  by 
pride.  Their  sons  also  shall  be  creatures  of 
a  humanity  risen  but  a  span,  with  the  vast 
slopes  of  ascent  before  them;  while  they 
stand  yet  so  low;  how  should  they  claim  the 
reward  of  the  ascended?  For  every  nation 
upon  earth  there  is  but  one  way, — to  advance 
in  goodness,  to  grow  in  wisdom;  when  they 
have  so  grown,  there  shall  be  times  when 
peace  shall  last  long  years,  and  their  claim 
shall  seem  less  vain  than  now.  But  vain  it 
still  must  be.  For  even  in  those  years  (them- 
selves by  what  a  mountain-barrier  hid  from 
us!)  the  storms  must  gather  upon  the  deeps 
again.  That  man  should  think,  being  yet  as 
a  child,  to  snatch  the  reward  of  the  perfect- 
ed, is  most  pernicious  and  presuming  doc- 
trine. As  the  children  of  men  now  are, 
greedy  and  unstable,  a  crowd  of  jealous  clans, 
sects,  classes,  the  sole  peace  matched  with 
them  must  yet  be  measured  out  in  lengths 
which  to  eternity  shall  seem  but  points  of 
time,  and  so  corruptible  that  its  decay  must 
breed  new  wars.  That  such  men  should  ar- 
raign God  for  suffering  wars  to  be,  what  is 


70  Domu0  Dolon0 

it  but  the  cry  of  blindness?  For  God  should 
mock  himself  should  he  give  to  any  such  the 
rewards  appointed  for  the  perfect.  A  brief, 
frail  peace  assorted  to  the  nature  of  mortality, 
this  alone  is  meet  for  man  until  his  ill  way 
be  amended.  This  only,  it  may  be,  in  his 
unpurged  heart  does  he  in  singleness  desire. 
For  its  very  changefulness  commends  it  more 
to  his  inconstancy  than  that  eternal  concord, 
which  in  the  fondness  of  his  exaltations  he 
sometimes  think  to  love.  Man  were  not  man 
were  he  constant  to  an  immobility;  fugientia 
capiat,  he  follows  after  that  which  leaves 
him  on  the  swiftest  wing.  As  he  is,  and  has 
been,  and  haply  long  must  be,  he  has  no  care 
for  things  unthreatened  or  unpriced,  like  the 
general  air,  to  be  had  for  the  fetching  of  a 
breath,  free  to  all  in  every  place  and  at  every 
hour;  his  love  is  for  the  costly,  the  contested, 
the  strife-engendering,  the  things  for  which 
men  take  jeopardy  of  their  lives.  Without 
her  present  swiftness  of  evasion,  the  contrast 
with  dire  war  withdrawn,  peace  should  soon 
cloy  this  coveting,  fastidious  creature.  There- 
fore it  is  that  he  must  change  at  the  root,  he 
must  grow  up  out  of  immaturity  before  aught 


Domu0  Dolotig  71 

that  endures  for  ever  may  hold  his  variable 
heart.  Even  to-day,  after  what  weary  ages 
of  his  striving,  the  most  everlasting  quality 
in  man  is  his  child-nature. 

All  creatures  have  the  peace  which  is  of 
their  own  state ;  our  peace  is  mortal  like  our- 
selves; no  peace  save  that  which  knows  decay 
has  yet  descended  upon  this  earth.  Man  does 
unjustly,  when  he  blames  this  his  proper 
peace,  that  it  grows  old  and  suffers  war  to 
come  up  against  his  life.  The  priestess  of  a 
temple  in  Hellas  once  grew  old;  while  she 
slept,  fire  broke  forth,  and  the  temple  was 
burned  down.  Then  the  citizens,  who  should 
have  blamed  themselves  for  tasking  her  be- 
yond her  weakness,  arose  in  wrath  that  she 
followed  the  law  of  Nature  and  not  theirs; 
they  punished  bitterly,  refining  chastisement 
into  vengeance;  they  left  her  marble  statue 
erect  in  whiteness  before  black  ruins  that 
every  passer  by  should  know  her  deed.  Men 
deal  with  Peace,  as  those  citizens  with  their 
priestess.  They  ascribe  to  her  in  their  fool- 
ishness powers  belonging  to  another  state. 
And  when  she  is  proved  to  have  none  such, 
they  nourish  unjust  and  bitter  memories,  un- 


72  Domu0  Dolotis 

til  once  more  the  incorrigible  hope  returns, 
and  the  temple  is  rebuilt,  and  another  priest- 
ess named  to  grow  old  and  fail  again.  So  the 
cycle  of  illusion  and  forgetfulness  runs  the 
old  course.  The  peace  which  lives  with  men 
and  serves  them  is  as  themselves  imperfect; 
while  they  live  still  corruptible,  it  also  must 
decay,  and  yield  to  natural  laws  of  death. 
How  should  we  say  that  because  we  now 
repent,  the  temple  of  man's  hope  shall  never 
burn  again?  We  are  first  to  give  pledge  and 
proof  that  we  have  repented  for  all  time. 

God,  said  Augustine,  of  his  just  ordinance 
has  given  to  man  upon  earth  not  the  guerdons 
of  the  immortals,  but  those  rewards  only 
which  sort  with  his  finite  nature;  among  them 
he  has  set  a  bounded  peace  according  to  the 
limitation  of  the  life  temporal,  and  therewith 
such  things  as  may  be  needful  to  defend  it 
or  recover,  if  it  be  ravished  away.  He  has 
not  given  the  peace  of  quiet,  the  peace  of 
Sabbath,  the  peace  without  an  evening.  Let 
man  therefore  forbear  to  claim  of  right  the 
whole  fulfilment  of  peace,  while  he  himself 
is  unfulfilled.  His  rash,  forestalling  hope 
argues  him  simple  as  those  earliest  Christians, 


Domu0  Doloris  73 

looking  to  see  In  the  flesh  that  second  coming 
for  which  Christendom  yet  waits  after  nigh 
two  thousand  years.  For  unregenerate  man 
to  speak  as  though  by  virtue  of  decrees  or 
treaties  he  might  keep  peace  for  ever  upon 
earth,  a  deathless  bird  incaged,  what  is  it  but 
a  breath  of  vanity?  The  spirit  must  be 
changed,  or  all  his  mechanisms  are  nothing, 
his  leagues  vain;  for  not  on  any  clause  or 
document,  but  on  the  inward  nature  hangs 
fast  the  whole  event.  And  who  is  so  blind 
as  not  to  know  that  it  is  easier  to  build  or 
destroy  an  empire  than  lastingly  to  change 
one  vital  spring  of  human  action,  such  as  the 
collective  pride  from  which  wars  flow?  These 
things  are  lodged  too  deep  to  be  reached  by 
statutes.  As  knowledge  feels  its  dark  way 
backward  beyond  history,  and  science  ex- 
plores the  state  of  men  too  primitive  to  re- 
cord their  lives,  it  grows  clear  that  the 
vanities  and  greeds  which  move  ourselves 
were  implanted  in  the  mind  when  the  first 
living  race  grew  human.  If  through  six 
thousand  chronicled  years,  succeeding  un- 
recorded thousands,  these  faults  have  never 
ceased  to  flourish,  what  madness  to  believe 


74  Domu0  Dolotigi 

that  drafted  treaties  can  end  all  in  a  pair  or 
score  of  generations!  As  well  believe  in 
power  of  spells  to  transmute  the  elements 
of  things.  And  if  even  to  disguise  these 
greeds  and  vanities  is  thus  a  matter  in- 
finitely hard  and  slow,  how  long  shall  it 
be  before  the  desire  of  whole  peoples 
or  whole  classes  shall  be  transferred  from  the 
covetable  things  of  competition,  wealth,  ter- 
ritory, and  all  else  of  the  material  kind,  to 
things  unseen  and  spiritual,  the  fruits  of  char- 
ity and  mutual  justice,  which  alone  are  con- 
gruous with  everlasting  peace?  What  huge 
Impenetrable  wastes  of  time  are  to  be  over- 
gone ere  there  come  an  end  to  this  aboriginal 
unquenched  desire?  What  power  shall  thus 
miraculously  turn  within  calculable  time  the 
vain  and  coveting  heart  of  man,  which  many 
saints  and  prophets  have  striven  to  make 
anew,  but  left  the  same  intractable  and  stub- 
born substance  for  which  Chaldeans  framed 
their  laws? 

At  this  point  one  seemed  to  hear  a  Pla- 
tonician  speaking  thus  to  the  forgetful  vis- 
ionary tribe.  "Sirs,"  he  said,  "I  would  have 
you  recall  this  saying  of  my  master,  that  in 


Domu0  Dolotig  75 

every  man  there  are  two  tendencies  or  in- 
stincts, one  verging  towards  submissiveness, 
the  other  towards  the  spirited  use  of  strength. 
In  one  breast  the  first  may  prevail,  the 
second  in  another,  and  when  either  runs 
into  excess,  there  is  produced  the  abject  or 
the  overbearing  person,  each  after  his  kind  a 
hkely  servant  of  injustice.  If  you  shall  con- 
sider great  multitudes,  you  shall  discover  all 
possible  admixtures  between  the  two  ex- 
tremes ;  in  nations,  which  are  communities  of 
men  united  by  one  blood  or  interest,  you  shall 
find  them  in  mass  and  wide  diffusion,  and  by 
conjunction  more  dangerous  in  excitement, 
since  the  faggot  burns  more  fiercely  than  the 
stick.  Always  these  instincts  are  opposed, 
whether  their  force  be  nearly  equal,  or  wheth- 
er the  one  predominate  above  the  other,  lend- 
ing a  whole  people  a  name  for  intolerance  or 
for  meekness.  Observe  now  that  this  inward 
and  instinctive  enmity  is  not  between  virtue 
and  vice,  but  between  two  neutral  qualities. 
And  herein  lies  ineradicable  the  root  of  evil. 
The  opposition  is  not  transient  or  unembod- 
ied;  it  is  ancient  and  innate  and  before  moral- 
ity.    Submissiveness  is  good,  as  tending  to 


76  Domii0  Dolotig 

quiet  and  good  order;  and  high  spirit  is  good, 
as  fostering  manfulness;  each  in  its  own  way 
works  to  fulfil  the  nature  of  the  man.  Both 
in  individuals  and  in  peoples,  if  you  would 
guide  progressing  nature  towards  perfection, 
you  must  so  far  compose  this  inward  discord 
that  all  peoples  under  all  governments  may 
think  alike,  and  think  rightly,  as  to  what 
things  are  honourable  and  just  in  their  rela- 
tions. It  behoves  you  then  to  find  some  divin- 
er art  of  statesmanship  than  any  yet  dis- 
covered, which,  using  the  two  instincts  as 
warp  and  weft,  shall  by  their  perfect  inter- 
texture  weave  indestructible  the  great  web 
of  the  State.  For  otherwise  their  unaccorded 
difference  will  continually  draw  them  apart, 
and  at  periods  they  will  tend  so  far  asunder 
that  each  will  lose  its  neutral  quality  to  as- 
sume the  colour  of  a  vice,  the  orderly  hearts 
growing  slothful  and  timid  to  the  point  of 
cowardice,  so  as  to  do  no  less  than  tempt 
aggression,  the  courageous  provocative  and 
beyond  reason  fierce.  And  then,  yea,  though 
we  be  all  democracies,  there  will  be  ever  at 
hand  the  ambitious  leader  and  the  broker  of 
false  fame  who  will  use  the  pugnacious  nature 


Domus  Dolotis!  77 

to  embroil  good  neighbours,  ready  of  his 
mere  pride  to  drive  them  into  ruin.  Our 
task,  therefore,  is  perhaps  the  most  arduous 
on  earth,  to  establish  a  harmony  in  the  soul 
which  shall  reconcile  these  two  dissimilar  or 
contrary  parts  of  nature,  so  that  the  com- 
bative may  leave  aggression,  and  the  peace- 
ful cease  from  self-abasement,  and  mankind 
keep  uncorrupted  peace,  not  for  a  decade  or 
a  generation,  but  long  untroubled  ages 
through.  For  until  these  contraries  transfuse 
and  penetrate  each  other,  so  that  the  spirit 
which  seeks  quietness  is  duly  touched  with 
flame,  and  that  which  seeks  supremacy  is  ever 
tractable  to  justice,  peace  shall  not  be  for 
many  ages,  much  less  for  all  time,  but  for 
clipped  and  shorn  durations,  mere  strips  and 
lengths,  with  war  the  certain  end." 


IX 


NOCTILUCA,  sated  with  night,  was  of 
those  who  sometimes  saw  the  vision. 
It  shone  for  her,  but  as  the  farthest  of 
all  stars:  she  also  was  almost  of  the  Platoni- 
cians.  And  to  her  immediate,  practical  mind 
the  cause  of  its  remoteness  lay  not  so  much  in 
the  general  backwardness  of  souls  as  in  the 
particular  pugnacity  of  men.  On  this  point 
she  might  not  be  directly  countered  by  any 
seeker  after  the  lesser  peace ;  you  must  fetch 
a  compass  in  advance,  and  spring  at  her 
out  of  some  ambush.  It  was  your  daily  wont 
to  cull  out  fancies  or  tales  from  your  read- 
ing for  her  amusement  when  her  toil  ended, 
to  win  her  countenance  for  books  in  a 
place  that  little  loved  them;  and  one  day, 
the  Iliad  lying  by,  you  told  her  of  that  famous 
brawl  of  gods,  how  Ares  and  Aphrodite, 
strife-makers  of  all  time,  were  borne  down 
by  Athene,  who  with  her  stout  hand  (there 
was  emphasis  upon  that  adjective)  took  up 
a  boundary-stone  and  smote  the  god  of  war 
78 


Domu0  Dolorisi  79 

upon  the  neck,  that  he  fell,  and  flung  the 
Love-goddess,  like  a  baggage,  after  him. 
She  liked  the  megalithic  argument,  and 
praised  the  effective  hand.  It  was  an  alle- 
gory: thus,  by  the  sense  and  strength  of 
woman,  wars  should  at  last  have  end.  But 
then  you  showed  out  of  the  same  book  that 
among  all  brawlers  and  accessories  to  brawls 
this  same  Athene  stood  the  first,  and  that  for 
incitements  and  assaults  there  was  none  her 
equal  either  on  earth  or  upon  Olympus.  It 
seemed,  then,  that  even  when  the  gods  walked 
earth  as  visible  examples,  pugnacity  was  no 
peculiar  gift  of  men,  and  history  more  re- 
cent than  the  mythologic  had  brought  small 
proof  of  change.  It  might  be  contended, 
therefore,  that  with  power  in  the  State  shared 
equally  by  the  two  sexes,  everlasting  peace 
should  have  less  chance  than  now.  It  was  re- 
mote because,  without  changed  hearts,  tem- 
poral peace  bred  corruption,  and  corruption 
in  its  turn  bred  war.  Into  which  matter  a 
Roman  woman  had  looked  deep  in  Caesar 
Domitian's  day,  perceiving  in  an  unregenerate 
world  that  long  peace,  like  long  rain,  rotted 
and  mildewed,  and  uttering  her  thought  of  it 


8o  Domu0  Dolorjg 

roundly  as  any  long-bearded  prophet.     Exi- 
tium  pax,  she  said:  peace  is  destruction. 

As  the  effect  of  these  morning  disputations, 
the  Sister  grew  more  tolerant  of  a  book,  sus- 
picious still,  yet  half  charmed,  as  one  who  sees 
a  bright  snake  in  the  sun,  and  does  not  strike. 
Although,  in  her  fast  conviction,  the  multi- 
tude of  books  was  too  great  for  the  world's 
good,  she  was  not  for  St.  Patrick's  way,  and 
would  give  some  of  them  the  freedom  of  her 
isle.  But  reading,  she  would  say,  stopped  do- 
ing; and  since,  for  her,  life  essentially  was 
action,  and  to  live  well  was  to  be  doing  as 
nearly  always  as  you  might,  she  would  pre- 
scribe an  antidote  for  legendi  caco'ethes,  of 
a  strength  accommodated  to  the  patient.  It 
was  the  day  following  her  acquaintance  with 
Athene  of  the  stout  hand  and  the  minor 
prophetess  Sulpicia,  that  she  first  brought 
gauze  and  cotton  wool  in  piles,  that  you  might 
make  a  tale  of  dressings,  and  reduce  your 
bookish  leisure :  such  means  she  had  devised 
to  stay  excess  In  Homer,  and  keep  the  abuse 
of  Balzac  down.  This  piece-work  became 
customary,  and  the  most  definite  among  your 
objects  in  existing.    You  mostly  achieved  the 


Domus  Dolorij 


tale;  but  sometimes,  falling  short,  must  find 
an  artifice  wherewith  to  appease  her,  since  to 
put  her  wholly  from  her  scheme  was  beyond 
your  present  force.  For  you  knew  now  all  the 
truth  of  Chaucer's  words:  "It  is  grete  sci- 
ence to  eschewe  the  wylle  of  a  woman,  when 
by  ef[ecte  she  putteth  her  entente  to  a  thinge 
:hat  her  herte  directly  draweth."  And  indeed 
her  way  was  good,  and  for  your  health.  For 
often  in  those  weeks  you  seemed  to  read  as 
a  beast  grazes,  half  the  day.  In  spite  of 
meals,  ablutions,  dressings,  visits  and  the  par- 
celling routine  of  time,  there  were  ever  voids 
to  fill.  And  after  the  first  period  of  weak- 
ness, you  could  not  always  loll  inert  upon  your 
bed  of  water,  like  a  seal  in  a  calm  bay. 

By  the  goodness  of  friends,  a  stream  of 
books  flowed  week  after  week,  with  the  un- 
hastened  movement  of  the  moraine,  from  a 
couch  beside  the  door  to  the  bed-table,  thence 
to  the  mantel,  and  onward  to  another  table 
on  the  way  out  and  homeward.  Your  read- 
ing went  through  ordered  phases,  alike,  it 
may  be,  for  many  a  patient  of  long  term,  who 
passes  from  apathy  to  slow  receptiveness,  and 
gradually  back  to  the  whole  ardour  of  mind ; 


82  Domu0  Doloris 

as  the  earth  turns  to  all  the  signs  and  the  full 
round  of  the  Zodiac,  so  you  seemed  to  look 
out  in  succession  upon  all  regions  of  the  lit- 
erary heavens.  In  the  first  days,  when  the 
foundations  of  physical  life  were  shaken,  and 
needed  a  still  gravitation  for  their  settling, 
the  mind  was  satisfied  with  fiction,  not  of  the 
noisy  cavalcading  sort,  which  drags,  as  it 
were,  at  a  horseman's  stirrup,  but  the  easy- 
faring  tales  of  common  life,  with  a  plenty  of 
light,  unshattering  emotions,  and  happenings 
which  are  never  quite  events.  This  phase 
was  long,  the  shock  having  been  rude,  and  the 
settling  in  proportion  slow.  It  was  a  welcome 
sign  of  progress  when  these  narratives  no 
longer  pleased;  and  after  a  transition  through 
the  romance  which  is  philosophy  dis- 
guised, the  second  phase  began.  In  this,  the 
mind  turned  critically  upon  all  fiction  save  the 
subtlest,  vexed  with  its  fluttering  about  cir- 
cumstance, its  chase  after  the  singular  and  ex- 
ternal: there  seemed  a  curse  upon  it  as  on 
the  sea,  which  cannot  be  still.  It  misdirected 
sight;  it  annoyed  by  indication  of  the  unde- 
sired.  Often  you  felt  as  one  led  through 
rooms  hung  with  strangers'  portraits,  con- 


Domu0  Dolon0  83 

demned  to  genealogic  talk,  when  from  an  op- 
posite embrasure  you  might  turn  your  back 
on  paint,  and  see  universal  earth  and  sky. 
Fiction  served  the  servants  of  caprice  and  was 
therefore  twice  a  slave;  it  must  obey  the 
ceaseless  call  for  change,  lest  its  clients  damn 
its  plots  for  sameness.  The  harmed  and 
stricken  long  not  for  difference,  but  for  unity, 
feeling  in  their  shaken  state  towards  litera- 
ture as  towards  religion,  that  it  must  stand 
not  on  singularity  but  on  singleness :  all  that 
estranges  or  excludes  they  would  thrust  away; 
they  will  not  have  their  house  built  upon 
sands,  but  upon  the  bedrock  that  no  flood 
changes,  the  one,  the  continuous,  the  sure,  the 
ground  and  base  of  all.  Beyond  this  stage  are 
many  halting-places  and  ascents  through 
which  the  recovering  mind  must  patiently 
climb  higher.  Towards  the  end,  it  seeks  the 
writers  not  of  this  time  or  that,  or  of  this  or 
that  society,  but  of  all  time  and  one  humanity; 
it  looks  for  the  laurelled  brows,  of  which  it 
is  sure  that  they  will  frown  or  be  serene 
rightly.  The  authors  now  preferred  are 
those  who  lead  up  an  argument  like  a  tide, 
historians,  orators,  epic  and  dramatic  poets. 


84  Domu0  Doloris 

scientists  of  the  large  induction,  all  sharers 
alike  in  wide  vision  and  the  sense  of  majesty 
in  cause.  The  classic  drama  pleases  now, 
even  the  French,  at  most  times  felt  too  bare, 
for  it  provides  a  vertebrate  ideal  structure, 
as  a  range  of  mountains  gives  a  country 
frame.  Thought,  lost  in  confused  valleys  and 
broken  hills,  comes  out  with  delight  on  an  en- 
chainment and  asserted  bond  of  things;  it  has 
joy  of  symmetry;  it  loves  the  strength  and 
consecution.  A  last  phase  comes  when  in 
their  turn  argument  and  proposition  tire. 
Now  all  that  reasons  and  discourses  fail  to 
guide.  The  soul  will  have  that  which  utters 
life  for  it,  as  flame  fire.  It  turns  to  lyric 
verse,  in  which  alone  it  seems  to  find  assur- 
ance that  it  indestructibly  and  personally 
lives. 

All  books  were  fellow-prisoners  now,  and 
in  worse  case  than  your  own,  for  to  them  the 
heart  of  the  house  was  cold.  There  was  no 
place  for  them  in  this  economy:  they  found 
here  no  part  of  an  ideal  commonwealth,  but 
a  corner  of  a  hostile  country.  The  sympathy 
that  was  ever  round  the  human  inmate  was 
not  for  them;  they  must  bear  old  feminine 


Domu0  Doloris  85 

disdains  and  rancours,  stored  up  for  their 
kind;  one  used  to  think  that  they  were  the 
true  patients,  and  in  good  sooth  they  suf- 
fered. When  in  the  morning  the  ward-maid 
came  in  storm,  their  troublous  day  began.  To 
the  spirit  of  that  hurricane,  they  were  but 
things  in  three  dimensions,  a  jetsam  for  her 
tossing.  For  her  they  had  neither  front  nor 
back,  top  or  bottom,  neither  kinship  nor  be- 
longing; without  contempt  or  malice  she 
wrought  on  them  bitter  severance  and  wide 
dispersion.  Now  was  the  grave  work  set  up- 
on its  head  in  a  lighter  company,  now  the  first 
volume  torn  from  the  second,  and  each  laid 
far  from  the  hand  that  sought  it,  as  though 
strewn  on  the  sunderbunds  of  Ganges.  She 
did  not  hate;  she  would  not  harm  them; 
but  they  were  indifferent  and  dumb  things,  in 
no  wise  animate  for  man.  More  positive  mis- 
liking  followed  later,  when  an  elder  among 
nurses  took  the  ward,  one  taciturn  but  of 
some  humour,  dubbed  by  you  secretly,  in  her 
austerer  moods,  Severiana.  Hers  was  a  mind 
that  looked  on  books  as  unclean  things,  bring- 
ing dust  into  her  province,  and  harbouring 
before  her  face  the  abhorred  detritus;  when 


86  Domu0  Dolotis 

the  duster  was  in  her  hand,  you  might  have 
thought  she  flogged  them.  Yet  even  she  had 
no  consuming  hate;  therein  lay  the  point  and 
bitterness  of  their  suffering.  There  was  no 
martyrdom  won  from  this  handling;  they 
were  things  not  seriously  regarded.  None 
ever  reached  the  basket  which  is  the  general 
bier  of  books;  none  fell  from  the  mantel  to 
the  fire.  They  were  too  small  for  persecu- 
tion :  she  passed  out  and  let  them  lie. 


X 


ONE  wet  morning,  of  that  greyness 
which  seems  to  colour  thought,  the 
Noctiluca  came  in  with  a  face  that 
marked  storm  in  subsidence.  You  were 
at  the  point  of  making  good  lost  sleep,  and 
near  to  that  sweetest  entrance  into  slumber 
when  the  door,  tried  vainly  all  the  night,  is 
unbarred,  beyond  hope,  with  the  full  day. 
It  was  hard  for  a  mind  half  dreaming  and 
adrift  towards  calm  to  face  about  upon  un- 
quietness  and  breakers,  yet  there  was  no 
choice ;  there  were  no  ways  but  such  as  this 
to  requite  long  kindness,  and  what  was  it  to 
give  up  a  dream,  and  for  a  little  space  lend 
idle  ears?  You  therefore  roused  yourself 
to  make  an  audience,  seeking  to  conceal  your 
drowsiness,  lest  she  should  go  from  you  with 
undisburdened  soul.  It  seemed  that,  in  the 
night  just  past,  a  young  nurse  had  touched  the 
deeps  of  known  human  folly.  An  emergency 
arising,  of  which  mother-wit  should  have 
made  swift  end,  she  had  let  mischief  grow 
87 


88  Domu0  Dolotis 

apace  rather  than  strain  a  rule  and  essay  plain 
common  sense.  For  the  Sister's  helpful  na- 
ture, ineptitude  stood  next  to  sin;  four  hours 
now  had  her  brooding  mind  contained  the 
grievance;  it  was  pleasant,  it  was  more  grate- 
ful than  a  night's  rest,  to  see  the  instant  ease 
she  had  of  its  release.  Nurses  were  the  bond- 
slaves of  lectures  and  instructions;  they  loved 
the  letter  that  spares  thought;  and  the  pleas- 
ant shadow  of  a  regulation.  Their  wits  in 
one  night-hour  gathered  wool  in  bales.  Their 
ideal  of  life  was  an  eternal  supervision,  un- 
der which  they  might  live  safe  in  the  ab- 
sence of  their  minds.  Here,  feeling  perhaps 
the  theme  give  out  before  her  vigour,  she 
suddenly  enlarged  its  borders  and  drew  her 
whole  sex  into  the  charge:  such  influence  on 
quick  temperament  have  grey  skies  crowning 
a  vexation;  such  comfort  does  It  often  bring 
to  lash  that  which  you  love  well.  Women, 
It  seemed,  went  open-eyed  Into  slavery. 
They  were  the  serfs  of  method;  one 
who  for  love  or  pity  would  break  all  laws 
frangible,  would  die  rather  than  Infringe  a 
rule.  She  was  now  consciously  tirading,  but 
the  better  for  this  vent  of  spleen ;  her  Imagi- 


Domu0  Dolotiis;  89 

nation,  like  a  torch,  flared  in  the  recesses  of 
the  female  nature.  But  while  she  searched 
them,  dragging  many  things  to  light,  you  did 
not  closely  follow;  though  she  intended  but 
small  hurt  with  all  her  halings,  it  had 
seemed  unfair  to  hearken;  you  went  apart 
after  another  thought.  For  she  had  ap- 
proached a  universal  problem,  touching  the 
life  of  all  communities.  How  shall  discipline 
prevail,  but  also  freshness?  How  shall  a 
disciple  originate,  unovershadowed?  How 
shall  responsibility  let  youth  ripen  without 
disestablishment  of  maturer  age?  How  shall 
the  novice  practise  to  bring  down  emergen- 
cies, when  they  are  the  preserved  birds  of  the 
adept?  And  how  shall  the  probationer  over- 
leap the  Sister's  pale?  To  draw  the  best 
from  maturity  and  youth,  by  some  art  you 
must  yoke  together  In  the  common  service  the 
daring  and  the  cautious  mind.  There  was  but 
a  precarious  harmony  now;  as  things  were 
like  to  be,  half  a  peg's  turn  should  bring  great 
discord.  And  If  no  wise  change  should  come, 
one  rough  day  youth  might  thrust  age  under 
hatches,  and  steer  at  large  for  surpassing 
hazards.     It  had  been  said  that  youth  was 


90  Domu0  Dolorij 

drunkenness  without  wine.  But  sometimes 
age  seemed  insensibility  without  drug,  and 
like  youth's  bright  inebriation,  more  danger- 
ous for  being  a  state  of  nature. 

The  long  imbedded  regain  in  their  deep 
rest  and  their  dependence  more  than  one  men- 
tal quality  of  children.  They  can  make  them- 
selves believe  what  thing  they  will  in  broad- 
est day;  they  are  surprised  at  nothing;  all 
sequences  are  natural  to  them,  all  effects  upon 
one  plane  In  logic.  They  dream  by  day;  they 
live  In  the  land  of  wonder,  where  the  maddest 
Is  the  truest,  where  things  of  the  sea  come 
Into  the  land,  and  things  of  the  land  go  into 
the  air;  they  are  not  surprised,  whatever  fan- 
tasy be  enacted.  This  faculty  now  took 
charge  of  all  your  mind,  as  if  it  were  the 
governor  of  the  place,  and  at  suggestion  of 
a  sea-metaphor,  some  plash  within  the  water- 
bed  perhaps  aiding,  had  sent  the  Sister  afloat 
before  your  dream-dimmed  eyes;  she  was  as 
surely  launched  in  a  swift  boat  as  you  were 
fast  fixed  at  moorings.  Strange  nautical  di- 
versions now  began:  she  sailed  about  you, 
tacking,  beating  up,  racing  down  the  wind, 
and  at  each  passage  within  hailing  distance 


Domu$  Dolotis  91 

sent  over  to  you  new  Sulpiciads.  All  had  the 
full  clearness  of  reahty;  you  saw  the  tiller 
sway,  you  heard  the  water  hissing  at  the 
boat's  bows.  She  was  in  full  sail  all  about 
you,  and  you  must  interject  such  comment  as 
might  reach  her  as  she  flew  by.  The  first  time 
she  came  near  she  was  voluble  over  the  short 
sight  of  women.  They  loved  immediate  and 
small  things;  they  could  not  embrace  wide 
prospect.  All  hung  for  them  on  personality 
and  near  appearance;  they  did  not  test  by 
character,  but  approved  or  scorned  by  face ; 
whence  groundless  favourings  and  aversions 
which  should  mar  all  their  politics.  More- 
over, the  impetuous  side  of  their  character  of- 
fended; for  a  whim,  they  dashed  themselves 
to  grief  like  birds  on  lighthouse  lanterns. 
When  she  came  up  before  the  wind,  you  had 
just  a  chance  to  shout  at  her  that  if  these  de- 
fects indeed  existed,  they  at  least  went  with  a 
great  virtue,  with  a  sacred  primitive  spon- 
taneousness  and  noble  generosity  of  heart, 
without  which  this  were  an  uninhabitable 
world:  for  who  should  endure  life  with  none 
but  calculating  women?  She  raced  past;  you 
hoped  these  words  had  flown  aboard.  When 


92  Domus;  Dolotis; 

she  came  round  again,  she  had  fallen 
on  the  susceptibility  of  women,  ever  at  the 
mercy  of  impressing  powers,  good,  indif- 
ferent or  bad;  they  were  warm  wax  to  all. 
As  upon  this  quarter  she  must  needs  beat  up 
against  the  breeze,  you  had  more  time;  you 
argued  that,  were  it  so,  there  was  again  a 
compensation.  The  Golden  Age  was  before 
us  and  not  behind,  which  age  (a  seer  had 
said  it)  was  ordained  by  Providence  for 
woman;  her  receptive  nature  should  more 
perfectly  reflect  its  beauty  than  man's  rough 
surface ;  her  great  day  therefore  was  to  come. 
She  took  the  prophecy  away  upon  a  new  tack, 
and  at  the  next  approach  was  all  intent  upon 
the  future,  though  obstinate  yet  in  gloom. 
Her  point  was  now  that  with  a  sex  inequable 
and  fitful,  leaving  half  its  native  wit  enslaved, 
and  with  the  rest  conceiving  Amazonian 
queendoms,  the  cause  should  halt  for  as  long 
time  as  it  moved.  She  was  now  at  the  height 
of  her  indictment,  but  you  knew  (and  this 
was  the  charm  of  the  whole  onset) ,  that  had 
you,  which  might  all  gods  forbid!  approved 
a  single  count  of  it,  she  would  have  set  on 
you  in  your  turn,  and,  with  all  that  way  upon 


Domujs;  Dolon$  93 

her,  sunk  you  Incontinent  at  your  moorings. 
On  the  succeeding  tack,  the  future  was  still 
in  her  mind,  but  the  vehemence  had  now 
abated  and  the  speed;  fears  and  forebodings 
stilled  her.  She  dreaded  for  her  sex  a  rival- 
ry with  man  in  pursuit  of  life's  gross  rewards, 
money,  comfort,  preferment,  and  all  other 
covetable  things;  in  a  struggle  upon  this  low 
ground  not  even  the  stout  hand  of  Athene 
should  bring  the  placewoman  to  her  ambition, 
for  the  man's  bones  were  heavier  than  hers, 
as  nurses  had  good  cause  to  know.  And  how 
should  a  woman  put  her  heart  into  dusty 
things  for  her  whole  life,  to  keep  interest  for 
them  always,  as  men  must  learn  to  do  ?  For 
at  least  she  should  need  a  dewier  and 
brighter  world  within  reach  for  her  often  re- 
sort, that  she  might  refresh  her  soul,  going 
apart  into  some  place  of  verdure.  Better 
were  it  for  her  to  remove  the  rivalry  into 
higher  fields  where  the  heart  might  live 
more  gracious  life,  irradiating  idea.  But 
if  she  were  indeed  content  to  struggle  for 
the  things  of  the  dust,  then  she  must  abandon 
thoughts  of  dominance,  and  compromise  with 
her  strong  rival,  seeking  to  change  into  a 


94  Domu0  Dolon0 

good  comradeship  his  jealousy,  or  that  worse 
thing,  the  patronage  of  his  kindness.  This 
counsel  at  least  seemed  to  concede  a  rudi- 
ment of  sense  to  man.  You  told  her  the 
question  put  by  Philosophy  to  the  last  sage 
of  Rome:  "JVhat  thing  is  a  manf"  and  of 
his  answer:  "J  reasonable  mortal  beast." 

She  was  now  standing  disembarked  upon 
your  floor,  as  if  she  had  never  sat  thwart  or 
held  tiller.  By  an  imperceptible  change, 
earth  had  replaced  sea;  no  break  was  felt; 
the  sentence  begun  on  the  one  element  was 
continuing  in  the  other.  But  here  was  no 
matter  for  surprise;  all  was  in  the  order  of 
the  unamazing  marvellous  which  makes  so 
well  for  happiness.  She  spoke  now  of  medi- 
cines; but  you  gave  imperfect  heed;  your 
interest  lingered  yet  with  the  former  subject. 
There  had  been  sides  of  It  to  which  she  had 
not  turned,  but  which,  if  really  she  had 
sailed  and  argued,  must  have  been  present 
to  her  thought.  There  was  that  ultimate 
difference  within  the  species,  and  its  effect  on 
power  of  larger  life:  you  wondered  with 
what  presumption  you  should  have  replied  if 
she  had  mooted  that.     Perhaps  you  would 


Domu0  Dolon0  95 

have  urged  the  human  habit  of  confusing  the 
superposed  with  the  elemental,  and  Imputing 
to  the  second  the  consequences  proper  to  the 
first.  Our  generations  fleet  too  fast  to  sec 
how  Time  and  Circumstance  bulk  out  a 
nucleus  with  their  Incrusting  layers.  These 
mighty  fashioners  deceive  us  by  their  inhu- 
man slowness;  they  work  with  an  aeonic  lei- 
sure beyond  our  wits.  We  imagine  for  them 
little  spans  like  ours,  in  which,  If  we  mark 
no  movement,  we  conceive  ourselves  among 
primordial  things :  so  does  the  ephemeral  mis- 
judge the  powers  that  make  Its  day.  But 
Time  and  Circumstance  may  undo  that  which 
they  have  put  together.  They  enucleate,  and 
prove  how  much  was  of  their  adding;  they 
recompound,  and  cover  the  thin  core  anew. 
And  If  we  do  not  understand  that  centuries 
are  their  hours,  what  Is  that  to  them?  They 
work  on,  and  our  ultimates  change  under 
our  eyes.  The  Hebrew  nature,  as  It  came 
out  of  the  Ghetto,  was  deemed  final  once; 
Shylock  was  ultimate,  and  Barabas  of 
Malta ;  all  cringing  and  avaricious  qualities,  it 
was  said,  had  run  in  the  Jew's  blood  since 
Abraham    came    from    Ur.     But    although 


96  Domu0  Dolon0 

there  are  Jews'  quarters  yet,  and  character 
may  still,  in  the  new  freedom,  bear  marks 
from  old  environment,  already  there  is  per- 
ceived large  benefit  from  air  and  room  for 
a  fuller  growth.  It  has  been  said  that  when 
the  Gentile  drove  the  Jew  into  the  Ghetto 
he  thrust  the  seedling  of  the  Lebanon  into  a 
flower-pot,  to  object,  after  generations,  that 
It  was  no  more  a  noble  tree.  But  Time  and 
Circumstance  revoked  in  part  their  former 
work,  and  there  have  been  seen  of  that  race 
many  of  royally  free  hands,  and  of  a  public 
spirit  beyond  the  imagination  of  King  John; 
there  have  gone  forth  of  them  to  our  wars 
men  who  would  have  followed  Gideon  or 
Maccabeus,  or  died  on  the  pyre  when 
Masada  fell;  and  none  of  us  is  yet  so  placed 
as  to  decide  that  these  rather  than  those  quali- 
ties are  not  nearest  to  the  core  of  Jewry. 
How  if  womanhood  had  been  in  like  manner 
dwarfed  in  the  flowerpot,  less  straitly  en- 
closed, but  for  longer  tract  of  time?  Thus 
it  had  seemed  to  the  most  unvisionary  among 
men  of  vision,  who,  having  well  observed  his 
kind  in  the  world,  withdrew  into  his  house  of 
Eyquem  to  sort  out  his  knowledge.     To  him, 


Dornug  Dolotiis  97 

after  trial  of  various  life,  it  appeared  that 
the  two  sexes  stood  near  to  each  other  in  most 
powers;  custom  and  differing  instruction  had 
thrust  them  apart  beyond  the  plan  of  nature. 
And  for  this  inequality,  he  said,  it  was  easier 
to  accuse  the  one  sex  than  to  excuse  the  other. 
Such  things  you  might  have  urged,  adven- 
turing in  waters  beyond  your  depth.  You 
were  glad  they  were  left  unspoken;  that  large 
demand  of  time  should  have  chilled  ingenu- 
ous eagerness.  You  had  been  fain,  were  but 
the  power  yours,  to  lead  on  the  argument 
to  a  thought  which  the  ultimate  difference 
should  more  help  than  harm:  that  there  ex- 
ists a  spiritual  motherhood;  that  woman  is 
maternal  to  the  great  hopes  of  human-kind, 
which  without  her  are  neither  formed  nor 
know  achievement,  nor  move  effective  in  the 
world;  that  at  every  period  of  bright  birth 
she  should  come  forth  ascendant,  like  Mira, 
the  wonderful  star,  which  out  of  obscure  dis- 
tances flames  into  the  second  magnitude  and 
recedes  to  ingather  light  again.  But  these 
were  high  mysteries  not  for  any  words  of  the 
unillumined;  and  the  Sister  preparing  now 
for  departure,  it  seemed  well  to  end  all  with 


98  Domu0  Dolotis; 

praise  of  noble  women,  and  chiefly  those  of 
this  healing  service,  who  had  done  gentle 
duty  amid  many  and  fierce  jaws  of  danger, 
as  if  they  worked  in  the  peace  of  English 
shires.  What  region  of  devastated  earth 
was  not  full  of  their  labours?  Shipwrecks, 
bombardments,  crossing  of  wintry  mountains, 
all  these  things  they  had  known,  and  had 
feared  none.  They  had  been  worthy  of  the 
surgeons  at  work  beside  the  very  gap  of  war, 
whose  hearts  had  so  passed  into  their  hands 
that  their  lives  were  very  cheap  to  them,  if 
only  they  might  fulfil.  For  all  these  unfor- 
saking  natures,  the  common  words  of  praise 
seemed  cold.  You  sought  for  them  a  fervid 
phrase  out  of  the  East: 

The  last  of  the  last  of  them  are  princes. 


XI 


OFTEN  in  the  night  hours  you  would 
wonder  how  it  should  fare  with  the 
countries  of  the  world  in  the  changes 
to  ensue,  and  how  it  should  be  with  your  own 
land,  that  ancient  and  slow-moving  England 
over  which  glib  foreign  wit  made  merriment. 
Why,  England  should  fare  well,  through  her 
very  singularity  in  fault  and  virtue;  she 
should  outgo  nations  that  dared  not  start  to 
move  without  rounded  systems.  In  great  re- 
forms, that  people  will  sometimes  first  ad- 
vance which  has  built  few  theories  across  its 
way.  How  many  such  reforms  had  been  ef- 
fected here,  how  many  charters  wrested  from 
kings,  while  reasoning  peoples  yet  wore  the 
yokes  which  our  folk  long  ago  had  broken.  It 
might  be  that  to  the  observer  from  other 
shores  England  was  strange  as  Egypt  to 
Herodotus,  the  land  of  curious  custom;  yet 
Egypt  taught  Greece,  and  from  England 
France  had  learned.  Here  was  a  peo- 
ple eccentric  from  the  usual  orbit,  and 
99 


loo  Domu0  Dolotisi 

further  from  the  norm  than  any  race 
which  has  attained  or  defended  greatness. 
A  people  mistrustful  of  fine  logic,  claim- 
ing a  freedom  of  empiric  life,  as  if  that 
were  a  privilege  sealed  to  it  from  the 
ancient  time.  Original  in  judgment;  de- 
serving neither  praise  nor  blame  after  the 
manner  of  other  tribes  of  man.  In  maturity 
still  immature,  bringing  a  boy's  mind  to  men's 
affairs,  and  therefore  haply  favoured  more 
by  Fortune,  who  loves  youth  in  all  its  kinds 
and  gives  it  her  friendliest  stars.  Islanded 
in  the  seas  of  thought,  apart  from  continents; 
ringed  about  by  mist-engendering  waters; 
looking  on  blurred  landscapes  through  rain- 
iest air;  not  born  or  used  to  clearness.  Yet 
for  all  that,  wise  with  a  weather-wisdom 
learned  not  from  theories  but  from  freezings, 
drenchings,  and  all  variableness  of  afflict- 
ing skies;  a  wisdom  fed  straight  from  the 
soil  of  life  and  increased  by  an  art  like 
woodcraft,  of  which  the  doctrine  is  the 
touch  of  things.  There  are  those  who  have 
maintained  that  the  instinct  of  the  tried  old 
breed,  coming  up  strongly,  as  it  were  from 
below  self-consciousness,  is  better  in  a  storm 


Domusi  Dolon0  loi 

than  the  reasoning  of  new  men,  starting  too 
high,  and  blown  this  way  and  that  whenever 
it  must  pause  to  check  its  bearings,  for  instinct 
is  less  swayed  by  momentary  forces,  less  sen- 
sitive to  distracting  doubts.  The  people  in- 
stinctive in  this  wise  moves  with  the  impulse 
of  all  its  generations,  in  one  mass,  like  a  slid- 
ing sea;  it  trends  for  the  main  issue.  Our 
country  moving  so,  not  seldom  found  true 
direction  and  drove  majestically  towards  its 
goal. 

In  the  same  still  hours,  with  the  silence 
letting  pass  faint  sounds,  in  the  day  beyond 
earshot,  the  spirit  of  the  place  would  come 
with  them,  and  engross  consciousness.  It 
was  felt  as  a  breeze  of  evening  after 
sore  heat,  over  lids  that  close  for  it,  up- 
on lips  that  smile  to  it,  in  hair  that  lifts 
at  its  light  touch,  as  it  comes  suave  with 
coolness  of  streams  and  clean  rock-masses, 
musical  at  last  with  leaf-sounds,  and  exqui- 
sitely soothing  all  things  with  freshness. 
And  every  time  that  by  dying  down  of  sounds 
it  flowed  into  the  voids  of  stillness,  and  the 
heart  stirred  to  the  moving  and  the  going 


I02  Domu0  Doloris 

of  it  over  the  face  of  things,  the  whole  of 
the  attending  life  paused  eagerly,  and  was 
gladdened  through  all  its  deeps  again.  For 
though,  after  a  while,  you  grew  to  expect  the 
caress  of  the  breeze,  yet  the  sense  of  strange- 
ness never  died  that  experience  great  and 
fortunate  as  this  should  have  been  given  to 
a  wild  creature,  a  hearkener  to  the  Sirens' 
song.  A  deep  gratitude  flowed,  that  upon 
the  undeserving  graceless  there  should  have 
descended  the  immeritable  grace.  The 
senses,  drawn  from  their  several  distractions, 
were  caught  up  in  a  unity  of  purer  feeling; 
all  in  you  that  was  receptive  of  higher  things 
tasted  the  sustained  and  still  delight.  When 
the  nature  inclines  thus  in  its  wholeness  to 
a  beauty  of  the  spirit,  the  place  of  such  experi- 
ence is  heaven-like;  whether  it  be  ward  or 
dungeon,  it  becomes  the  place  of  light.  For 
these  are  imparadising  hours;  and  the  captive 
may  feel  lawfully  for  his  cell  the  rapture  of 
that  emperor  amid  his  marble:  "If  there  be 
any  heaven  upon  earth,  it  is  this,  it  is  this, 
it  is  this." 

Whenever  through  intrusion  of  outward 
things   the    charm   broke,    and   the   indrawn 


Domus  Doloris  103 

senses  went  apart,  there  would  return  the 
former  wonder  that  waters  of  such  fount 
should  be  diffused;  they  were  lost  in  run- 
lets, when  they  might  be  gathered  as  one 
power  to  enrich  earth  like  Niagara  or 
Nile.  The  rivers  of  the  earth  created;  the 
rivers  of  the  spirit  ran  three  parts  to  waste. 
And  the  force  from  which  this  influence 
flowed  was  for  the  most  part  set,  not  to  make 
new  things,  but  to  make  old  things  anew.  It 
might  create;  it  healed  only,  and  restored. 
In  like  manner  other  streams,  bright  from 
the  same  sun,  were  squandered;  man  failed 
to  develop  his  inheritance.  Pondering  on 
these  things,  one  seemed  to  hear  again 
a  young  enthusiast,  encountered  long  ago, 
to  whom  rulers  of  lands,  and  leaders  of 
class  and  section,  were  all  alike  preposterous 
men,  neglecting  the  diviner  helpful  spirit, 
which  is  in  every  people,  but  for  lack  of 
direction,  is  diffused,  or  privily  expended,  or 
runs  unprofitably  away.  Not  one  of  these 
governors  and  leaders  among  men  but  shame- 
lessly inverted :  not  one  but  began  with  the 
wrong  end.  The  dominant  and  first  thought 
of  each  was  for  estate,  the  second  for  body, 


104  Domu0  Doloci0 

the  third  (after  huge  interval)  for  mind;  the 
heart,  by  general  consent  of  that  fraternity, 
was  left  in  some  outer  light  unbearable  to 
them,  or  admitted  only  for  the  part's  benefit, 
and  thus  at  a  stroke  enslaved.  But  if  one 
spark  of  imagination  burned  in  them  (here  he 
himself  ruddily  and  finely  kindled),  they 
would  even  in  that  poor  glimmer  perceive  the 
fell  inversion,  and  that  to  teach  men  first  to 
get,  first  to  covet,  first  to  divide  the  things  of 
competition,  instead  of  first  to  help  each  other 
and  make  their  natures  rich  with  loving-kind- 
ness, was  as  if  you  should  teach  children  to 
walk  first  upon  their  hands.  These  governors 
were  of  a  savage  and  immoral  ignorance. 
In  the  name  of  surviving  sense,  let  them  un- 
scale  their  eyes;  let  the  great  gonfalon  of  the 
Whole  stream  out  above  us,  and  all  men 
stand  first  for  it,  putting  aside,  till  they  had 
learned  to  serve  under  it  with  consecrated 
powers,  every  greed  sectional  or  private, 
every  dividing  livery  and  banner.  As  surely 
as  those  old  theorists  erred  who  forbade  the 
State  to  sweeten  its  sour  economy  with  human 
feeling,  so  grossly  was  the  theory  blind  which 
eschewed  for  It,  In  the  general  ordering  of 


Domu0  Dolorisf  105 

life,  the  discipline  and  direct  use  of  hearts. 
None  but  the  Ignorant  could  argue  that  the 
habit  of  looking  first  to  the  Whole  in  all 
things  might  not  be  enforced  by  a  wise  rule; 
all  virtue  was  In  great  part  habit,  and  it  were 
no  more  Impossible  to  train  the  mass  of  citi- 
zens in  altruist  purpose  than  now  to  implant 
the  military  virtue,  which  at  first  is  possessed 
by  few,  but  in  the  end,  taught  day  by  day, 
is  propagated  even  in  timid  men.  As  a 
nation  was  enrolled  for  its  own  defence,  so 
might  It  be  embodied  for  the  furtherance  of 
common  good,  and  there  should  begin  a  uni- 
versal service  which  should  lift  forward  the 
peoples  of  manlcind  more  mightily  in  one 
century  than  heretofore  in  sequent  ages. 
To-day  the  great  host  of  young  men  and 
maidens  was  let  pass  from  youth  into 
maturity  to  be  Immersed  forthwith  in 
their  own  small  affairs,  coming  of  age 
for  themselves  only,  without  ever  having 
served  consciously  under  the  common  stand- 
ard to  prevent  and  daunt  all  foes,  physical 
and  ghostly,  of  the  larger  life.  But  if  govern- 
ments embodied  this  clean  power  of  ado- 
lescence for  a  work  worthy  of  it  in  an  army  of 


io6  Domu0  Dolotis 

a  New  Model,  they  should  do  more  for  the 
world  than  all  your  bygone  kings  and  cap- 
tains. They  should  recognise  the  kindly  vir- 
tues; they  should  cease  to  waste  magnificent 
streams  of  light. 

The  high  shame  of  policy,  he  went  on,  was 
ignorance  of  this  light.  It  had  been  well  for 
these  misgovernors  and  misleaders  if  they 
had  remembered  the  tale  of  the  great  horse 
Bucephalus,  who  threw  all  in  turn,  till  there 
came  one  with  wit  enough  to  head  him  sun- 
wards. There  was  no  true  way  to  govern 
peoples  l;)ut  to  set  them  first  towards  the  sun. 
But  now  the  great  horse  was  drawn  here  and 
there  by  uncertain  hands,  and  turned  in 
wrong  directions,  his  own  shadow  puzzling 
him,  till  there  grew  up  in  him  an  ungovern- 
able temper.  The  trainer  had  never  taught 
where  lay  the  line  between  the  civic  and  un- 
civic;  it  was  as  if  the  teacher  of  a  faith  should 
forget  his  creed.  And  so  the  young  went 
out  into  life  ignorant,  licensed  to  break,  by 
authority,  the  first  and  great  commandment. 
By  consent  of  governments,  if  they  did  but 
contribute  and  obey,  they  were  free  to  think 
first  of  their  own  selves,  their  families  and 


Domug  Dolotis  107 


houses,  of  their  classes  and  their  sects;  for 
the  Whole  they  were  never  taught  to  think, 
and  as  like  as  not,  if  they  essayed  it,  were 
approved  less  than  before,  as  less  calculable 
by  the  poll,  worse  units  in  statistics.  "Just 
Heaven!"  he  would  cry,  "to  live  for  impost 
and  deduction;  to  make  citizenship  a  negative 
affair  of  obeying  laws,  of  not  transgressing, 
when  by  a  genial  breath  they  could  fan  and 
actuate  a  slumbering  ardour  of  good  life  that 
might  so  royally  flame  upward!  Yet  if  they 
would  but  lift  their  eyes  and  look  from  their 
shut  windows,  what  incomings  of  health  and 
willingness  should  meet  their  view,  the 
kernel-wealth  of  nations,  not  drawn  out  by 
threats,  but  flowing  to  them,  such  easy  and 
vast  revenue  as  no  Chancellors  of  their  Ex- 
chequer have  ever  fingered  in  their  dreams. 
If  they  dared  make  conscription  of  the  heart, 
you  should  even  see,  in  our  midst  not  rare  or 
pointed  at,  or  suspected,  but  the  normal  hu- 
man creature,  the  good  self-lover  of  the 
Greek  moralist,  who  seeks  indeed  for  himself 
an  advantage  over  all  his  neighbours,  but  of 
one  sort  only — a  larger  share  in  doing  well." 
Thus  had  the  enthusiast  declaimed,  fulgu- 


io8  Domu0  Dolotis 

rant  as  a  young  god  with  tossed-back  hair, 
threatening  blind  rulers  with  Tower  and 
Traitor's  Gate.  *'For  at  certain  levels,"  he 
said,  cooling  from  wrath  to  youthful  irony, 
"stupidity  is  treason,  high  in  proportion  to 
the  peak  on  which  it  sits."  That  had 
been  long  years  since,  when  he  had  seemed 
as  one  thumping  a  tub.  But  now,  when 
you  would  agree  with  him  that  rivers  of 
light  are  indeed  wasted,  you  could  have 
proposed  a  better  place  for  his  scorned 
leaders:  they  should  be  brought  into  a 
hospital.  They  should  receive  the  didactic 
and  memorable  blow,  which  in  the  case  of 
such  brittle  and  dry  natures,  should  be  no 
more,  perhaps,  than  the  news  that  the  direc- 
tion of  hearts  was  their  business.  To  hos- 
pital all  should  come,  the  great  officers  of 
State,  the  loud  leaders  of  our  factions,  there 
to  see  civic  life  unpolitically  lived.  Then 
might  a  Chancellor  have  new  inspiration  of 
finance,  the  leader  of  a  class  discover  and 
meditate  the  Whole,  the  legist  find  that  prece- 
dent is  hemlock,  and,  at  the  thought,  feel  a 
coldness  creeping  from  foot  to  heart.  As 
one  pursued  the  fancy,  one  was  more  than 


Domu0  Dolon0  109 

ever  sure  that  Fortune  watched  over  our 
land.  As  if  against  that  hour  she  had 
already  set  the  scene.  For  opposite  our 
Parliament  House,  in  full  counterview,  a 
straight  broad  bridge  between,  even  now  the 
hospital  stood  prepared. 

Here  were  but  light,  unserious  thoughts 
on  exalted  men  and  matters;  but  who  should 
ask  of  a  brain  acutely  tilted  the  sobriety  of 
level  heads?  And  ah!  one  thought,  if  after 
all  there  were  substance  in  the  young  man's 
dream,  if  Bucephalus  might  but  scientifically 
be  turned  sunward,  what  peace,  nobility  and 
clean  fire  should  descend  into  our  common 
life;  after  the  habit  of  facing  light,  all  else 
should  be  added  to  us.  For  if  but  all  who 
now  entered  upon  life  absorbed  in  private 
schemes  and  the  small  interests  of  class  and 
section,  if  but  all  upon  the  threshold  of 
careers  had  first  been  taught,  each  for  his 
short  term,  to  look  steadily  upon  the  Whole, 
that  the  orient  glory  and  effulgence  of  it 
might  pass  into  their  hearts,  then  might 
indeed  begin,  upon  the  great  scale  alone 
availing,  that  renewal  of  the  spirit  of 
the  mind  upon  which  stands  temporal  salva- 


no  Domu0  Dolon0 

tion;  then  might  all  men  think  with  the  sin- 
gleness of  one  as  to  what  things  are  honour- 
able and  just  and  true ;  then  might  the  nations 
go  forward  in  their  majesty  together  towards 
one  single  good.  Great  goals  now  beyond 
hope  should  come  into  clear  vision,  as  human- 
ity pressed  swifter  onward;  even  that  bright- 
ness of  everlasting  peace,  the  suffering 
world's  desire,  should  shine  over  nearer  hills. 
Even  that  light  should  shine.  The  conflu- 
ence of  uncounted  wills  should  carry  us  within 
its  rays.  The  great  peace  should  be  brought 
down.  And  upon  some  night  of  near-de- 
scended stars,  by  a  sign  burning  in  the 
heavens,  all  men  should  know  her  come,  as 
once  at  the  coming  of  a  lesser  peace,  iEgi- 
planctus  and  Cithaeron  flamed,  and  Argos 
knew  the  long  wars  done. 


XII 

BUT  if  a  right  self-hood  be  the  key  of 
common  life,  the  House  of  Pain  is  a 
fair  house  wherein  to  correct  such  as 
may  have  forgotten  or  never  learned  this 
wisdom.  For  there  you  shall  see  right  liv- 
ing in  a  simple  dignity,  exemplary  un- 
awares, a  life  beautiful  in  the  limitation  that 
gives  effect,  drawn  clearly  in  a  pure  line 
finely  spared;  you  shall  see  it,  and  be  put  to 
shame,  considering  the  vain  intricacy  of  our 
lives.  There  also  you  shall  begin  to  know 
yourself;  the  specimen  and  the  thing  for  other 
eyes  becomes  objective  to  its  own,  as  body 
first,  but  then,  the  afliance  of  the  flesh  and 
spirit  aiding,  as  the  whole  human  creature. 
In  the  wards,  life  is  back  upon  the  rudiments; 
knowledge  is  undergoing;  in  the  simple  light 
of  pain  vision  clears.  The  state  of  the  sick 
and  harmed  is  a  patience  always,  and  some- 
times a  passion;  it  is  a  rich  state,  by  which 
they  may  be  nobly  profited.  Their  natures 
become  as  still  wells,  in  which  lies  quietly  all 
that  time  has  dropped  in  them,  waiting  to  be 
III 


112  Domu0  Dolori0 

known;  amid  much  rusting  iron  and  broken 
shard,  the  recoverable  coin  of  gold.  The 
house  of  pain  is  the  house  of  truth.  It  has 
no  hanging;  its  bare  walls  take  and  give  back 
immediate  light,  as  the  day  floods  in  un- 
tempered.  Extenuating  shades  are  gone; 
homuncuhis  and  muliercula  look  from  these 
pillows.  All  here  dwell  with  themselves; 
they  know  how  scant  their  gear  is,  their  very 
narrow  furnishing.  For  as  the  body  is 
tricked  out  no  more,  but  at  the  mercy  of 
clear  eyes,  so  it  is,  in  part,  with  the  inward 
nature;  that  also  lies  displayed.  Pain,  a  great 
teacher,  sets  forth  the  character  of  woman- 
ling  and  manling;  little  he  misses  that  is  lov- 
able or  for  contempt;  he  knows  neither  flat- 
tery nor  malice,  showing  them  what  signature 
they  have  affixed  to  all  their  deeds.  Day 
after  day  the  portrayed  must  see  the  portrait, 
for  the  most  part  saddened  or  resenting,  buf 
sometimes  with  trouble  of  joy,  as  when 
Griseldis  discerns  her  royal  face.  It  is  hard 
instruction,  and  the  scholar  smarts  under  it; 
yet  if  there  be  in  him  any  stuff  of  manhood 
he  shall  gratefully  remember,  henceforward 
loyal  and  alumnar  to  this  school. 


Domufii  Dolon0  113 

He  who  has  thus  learned  in  open  view- 
shall  esteem  less  all  private  teaching  in  this 
kind,  and  prefer  this  more  public  way. 
There  is  a  familiar  essay  on  the  greatness  of 
the  sick  man  in  his  own  bed,  and  on  his  high 
solitude  as  he  lies  absolute  in  his  home,  with 
all  things  hushed  about  him,  engrossing  sym- 
pathies. There  he  lies,  by  flattering  request 
endeared  and  magnified  to  himself,  the  whole 
subject  of  his  thoughts,  a  great  lord,  with  all 
privileges  but  one,  that  of  long  tenure,  since 
by  mere  act  of  recovery  he  shall  lose  his  state. 
But  to  the  patients  of  the  wards  this  Is  no 
lord,  but  the  beggar  in  the  lord's  bed.  For 
them  there  are  neither  bushings  nor  obei- 
sances, but  each  is  cured  in  his  own  character, 
and  borne  with  as  he  bears.  Here  are  the 
true  pieties  of  kindness;  here  sufferings  are 
not  enlarged  but  set  in  their  proportion,  and 
by  comparison  receive  their  scale:  it  is  great 
equity.  Hither  it  is  that  the  strong  soul  would 
fain  come  with  its  battered  body,  that  they 
two  may  see  out  their  fate  under  just  law  to- 
gether, and  no  house  be  stilled  for  them,  nor 
any  stream  of  happy  life  turned  aside.  Here 
also  is  the  place  where  at  the  last  it  would 


114  Domu0  Dolon0 

come  to  take  departure,  since  homes  are  for 
continuous  life,  but  this  place,  haven-like,  is 
for  going  and  coming,  with  wharfs  prepared 
for  sailings,  whence  men  put  out  at  any  hour 
and  trouble  none  left  behind.  Hither  Death 
comes,  a  civil  and  familiar  client,  making  no 
disarray.  Souls  quietly  depart  to  the  sound 
of  usual  labours,  and  almost  unperceived;  it 
is  so  that  they  choose  it,  abhorring  loud  fare- 
wells. "Let  us  live,  laugh  and  be  merry 
among  our  friends,  but  die  and  yield  up  the 
ghost  among  strangers,  and  such  as  we  have 
not  known." 

In  these  ways  time,  which  gradually 
brought  strength,  brought  also  wholesome 
learning,  of  the  higher  kind  for  the  philoso- 
pher in  you,  of  the  primary  sort  for  that 
which  was  child;  and  since  in  his  hours 
of  day  a  patient  is  nine  hours  a  child,  for- 
gotten alphabets  of  life  are  taught  him 
in  this  nursery.  For  all  who  thus  forget,  the 
house  of  pain  has  glad  remedy.  If  any, 
spoiled  by  long  disablement,  would  exact 
service  no  longer  due,  and  spin  out  his  in- 
dulgence, there  are  ways  to  bring  truth  home 
without  utterance  of  words.     If  any  shall 


Domu0  Dolorig  115 

wince  under  too  slight  a  pain,  you  shall  mark 
him  brace  his  nerve  before  there  settles  upon 
the  recording  face  the  look  which  the  sorrier 
sufferers  know.  The  teachers  are  very  per- 
fect in  this  work;  they  leave  to  Pain 
the  higher  woodcraft,  but  none  more  dexter- 
ously than  they  can  prune  outshoots  of  char- 
acter. Rambling  tendrils  of  complacency 
vanish;  suckers  of  green  conceit  are  gone  ere 
you  perceive  them  touched.  And  after  a 
period  of  this  handling,  the  breeze  has  freer 
course  among  the  branches,  the  sap  runs  bet- 
ter in  the  stems  that  remain.  There  is  no 
deep  indoctrination  of  the  soul;  only  cure 
for  the  little  lesions  of  the  temper  and  curva- 
tures of  idle  habit.  In  your  days  of  con- 
valescence you  were  amused  to  watch  their 
deftness,  and  yourself  thus  delicately  to  be 
stripped  of  vanities.  You  pictured  them 
in  the  large  wards  like  pruners  going 
up  and  down  the  rows;  you  saw  in  fancy 
the  flash  of  the  knife  and  the  trail  of 
the  lopped  shoots  behind  them;  verily  the 
ground  about  your  own  roots  was  littered 
deep.  There  must  be  royal  satisfaction  in 
this  work,  you  thought,  a  delight  in  making 


ii6  Domu0  Doloris 

human  stems  yield  better;  it  must  be  the  true 
cultivator's  joy,  watching  his  trees  improve. 
You  began  to  understand  how  natural  it  was 
that  there  should  be  gaiety  here  and  laughter, 
since  with  good  husbandry  blitheness  ever 
goes.  In  the  first  days,  you  had  misliked  all 
sounds  of  mirth;  they  had  rung  false  amidst 
so  much  sadness.  But  now,  when  a  laugh 
sounded,  there  sang  out  of  it  a  wisdom  im- 
personal to  those  who  laughed;  unknown  to 
them,  it  used  their  gaiety  for  its  own  end. 
There  was  no  place  here  for  resentment;  by 
gallant  service  these  had  won  the  right  to 
laugh  near  the  high  throne  of  Death,  as  men 
by  bravery  have  won  privilege  to  stand  cov- 
ered in  a  king's  presence:  of  this  only  a  jeal- 
ous cowardice  might  complain.  You  ap- 
plauded the  wise  man's  opinion  that,  if  not 
glee  and  mirth,  at  least  an  orderly  settled 
countenance  in  those  around  were  sufficiently 
convenient  to  a  wise  and  discreet  sickness. 
And  so  wise  and  discreet  you  felt  yourself 
soon  grown,  that  you  could  stretch  complais- 
ance further,  and  admit  in  place  of  mere  com- 
posure a  positive  and  echoing  mirth.  For  the 
sound  of  it  reminds  amid  wounds  and  death 


Domus!  Dolori0  n? 

that  either  life  is  a  brave  business,  or  death 
the  better  state.  Those  who  might  command 
a  kindly  laughter  did  well  for  us  all;  they  in- 
terpreted the  courage  we  ourselves  were  fain 
to  show.  At  last  you  came  to  hate  the  day 
in  which  no  laugh  was  heard;  you  were  glad 
for  each  mirthful  voice;  you  hoped  that  even 
in  the  last  hour  of  consciousness  you  should 
never  wish  such  music  hushed. 

The  ancients,  ranking  human  qualities, 
held  mournfulness  a  vice  and  serenity  a 
mother  among  Virtues:  they  would  have 
wreathed  a  laurel  for  the  lighteners  of 
shadows  deep  as  these.  For  here  are  up- 
holders of  a  life  often  near  to  sinking;  their 
good  cheer  is  as  a  float  to  the  spent  swimmer, 
and  like  Leucothea's  wimple.  Many,  al- 
ready swallowing  bitter  waters,  have  clutched 
at  it,  and  again  struck  out  for  shore.  But 
since  out  of  good  evil  often  comes,  there  rises 
out  of  this  help  unexpected  harm  to  on- 
lookers. For  the  mass  of  men  are  wound 
up  to  a  full  feeling  by  none  but  instant, 
obvious  woe;  blur  it,  or  delay  an  end, 
and  they  run  back  to  apathy.  So  here  there 
is  a  mischief  from  this  valiance,  and  from  the 


ii8  Domu0  Dolons 

answer  to  it  which  stout  hearts  malce.  For 
when  the  swimmer  who  was  labouring  in  the 
troughs  now  seems  to  sport  upon  the  crests, 
the  watchers  upon  dry  ground  conclude  him 
safe,  and  comfortably  turn  their  backs.  All 
men  in  their  security  and  their  dear  pursuits 
are  hurriers  past,  unwillingly  reminded  of 
mortal  things.  If  that  which  may  disturb 
their  ease  looms  up  too  near,  they  quicken 
speed  aside,  or  seize  a  colourable  pretence 
not  to  understand  too  well.  As  they  go,  they 
sell  themselves  indulgence  for  this  retirement, 
and  ere  home  is  reached,  have  cheaply  ac- 
commodated conscience.  When,  therefore, 
they  are  met  with  the  brave  dissimilation  that 
pain  is  a  light  matter,  they  are  mightily  re- 
lieved; since  the  bearer  of  it  laughs  and  sings, 
they  need  not  stay  for  him;  life  calls,  and 
business  presses.  Thus  it  befalls  that  the 
stricken  within  the  wards,  when  they  seem 
too  easily  to  attune  pain  to  life,  do  us  in 
some  measure  a  disservice,  impelling  us  on 
our  natural  incline,  where,  without  them,  we 
slide  too  fast  downwards.  It  were  well  if 
they  more  sternly  used  us  for  our  good,  and 
excused  us  no  more  by  this  generous  pretend- 


Domu0  Dolotig  119 

ing.  It  is  a  brave  thing  that  they  raise  merry 
voices.  Yet  more  often  far  than  they  do 
now  they  should  cease  awhile  from  catches 
and  light  airs,  sometimes  to  interpose  that 
music  of  the  high  pomp  of  suffering  which 
shall  stop  short  the  most  careless  goer  upon 
his  way,  forcing  doubt  and  solemn  wonder 
into  his  soul.  For  they  make  that  music  very 
nobly,  since  they  must  ever  practice  it;  but  too 
much  for  themselves,  upon  muted  strings, 
and  beyond  our  hearing.  It  were  better  for 
our  health  if  ever  and  again  they  ceased  their 
muting,  and  let  the  strain  float  abroad  upon 
the  common  air;  or  if  they  will  not  so,  that 
they  should  wholly  shut  in  their  tunes  and 
laughter,  and  keep  these  things  also  from 
us,  to  which  we  have  no  right.  For  no  man 
may  claim  portion  in  their  lightness  who  has 
not  in  spirit  sought  to  share  their  burden; 
nor  should  any  sing  the  chorus  of  their  songs 
who  has  not  sometimes  moaned  with  them  in 
the  privity  of  his  own  heart. 

You  should  think,  hearing  ever  of  humours 
and  diversions,  each  ward  were  but  a  nursery, 
with  life  one  long  festival,  and  the  yule-tree 
standing  there  all  months  through.     But  that 


I20  lDomu0  Dolcri0 

which  is  more  constantly  set  up  is  the  Great 
Term  of  Pain,  about  which  all  must  move, 
some  drifting  towards  it,  some  away;  some 
cast  before  its  base,  there  to  sink  down  and 
make  an  end.  In  many  wards  there  is 
neither  tune  nor  jest,  but  even  lawful  gaiety 
is  stilled.  It  is  good  that  we  should  hear  of 
these  also,  and  not  deem  their  events  foreign 
to  our  lives.  There  are  wards  like  this,  on 
which  a  soldier,  for  most  salutary  learning, 
has  set  a  door  ajar:  The  patient  in  the  bed 
opposite  has  wept  all  night;  part  of  his  back 
is  blown  away.  In  the  next  bed  lies  the 
bravest  man  whom  this  recorder  ev^er  met: 
the  Sister  has  just  told  him  that  his  end  is 
near;  he  lies  quietly  dictating  his  last  letters 
to  the  friends  whom  he  shall  not  see  again. 
About  the  bed  in  the  far  corner  there  is  now 
a  silence.  But  yesterday  they  brought  back 
to  it  one  cut  to  a  mere  trunk  by  amputation 
of  his  second  leg.  As  consciousness  came 
back,  he  had  screamed  in  one  long  agony;  it 
seemed,  life  returned  to  him  for  no  end  but 
to  round  off  his  torment.  Then  Death,  not 
always  the  less  merciful,  hastened  in  aid 
against  the  profounder  cruelty  of  life.     And 


Domug  Dolon0  121 

all  the  while  there  had  stood  a  bowed  form 
in  that  corner,  a  father  powerless  except  to 
stand  with  folded  hands  and  hear  that  rem- 
nant of  a  strong  manhood  scream.  And 
every  man  in  the  ward  must  listen  too,  those 
whose  fate  it  should  be  themselves  to  founder 
at  the  Term,  no  less  than  the  fortunate  who  at 
last  should  make  Phaeacian  land:  every  man, 
and  not  one  had  lived  his  prime.  When  we 
would  be  persuaded  for  our  dear  comfort, 
that  science  has  ended  pain,  it  is  good  that 
such  things  be  recalled;  it  is  good  to  remem- 
ber that  if  these  walls  give  back  laughter, 
they  echo  not  less  with  Acherontian  sounds. 
And  even  the  sighs  and  shadows  that  rise 
most  faintly,  or  are  in  part  shot  with  music 
and  light,  are  not  to  be  explained  away  in 
order  that  our  consciences  may  sleep.  The 
surgeon  shall  have  right  to  his  wit,  the  nurse 
to  her  laughter;  they  know  propinquities  and 
occasions,  where  in  each  hour  the  shifting 
border  runs  between  sun  and  shade,  and  when 
it  is  safely  to  be  crossed.  The  patient  also 
shall  jest  in  his  interlude  of  ease,  or  coming 
up  from  the  deeps,  as  it  were  for  breath,  be 
free  of  his  poignant  mirth.     But  let  no  other 


122  Domu0  Dolotis 

have  the  right,  till  he  shall  have  striven  to  un- 
derstand how  closely  the  light  and  the  solemn 
thing  here  dwell  together.  What  House  of 
Pain  had  ever  better  beginning  than  the  most 
ancient  of  all  in  London  town,  which  the  ex- 
jester  of  a  king  founded,  retired  first  into  an 
austerer  life?  For  this  man  had  tried  the 
two  sides,  the  grave  and  the  gay;  by  St. 
Bartelmy,  therefore,  a  proper  founder! 
You  might  fancy  him  in  a  good  hour  remem- 
bering old  arts,  lighting  up  smiles  on  pallid 
faces  and  making  his  four  Sisters  hold  their 
sides.  But  you  believed  him  one  who  should 
never  jest  till  sure  by  his  own  proofs  that  the 
hour  was  good,  one  who  should  not  bid  suf- 
ferers laugh  till  he  knew  their  groans,  and 
had  seen  with  what  countenance  men  die. 


XIII 

WEEK  by  week  the  body  mended; 
fast.  For  there  were  hours  when 
sometimes  it  seemed  to  mend  too 
you  came  near  resenting  quick  recovery. 
Soon  it  must  bring  departure,  and  you  had 
found  contentment  in  this  place.  With 
mingled  thoughts  you  passed  to  the  conva- 
lescent's joy  of  doing  as  feats  the  former 
usual  things.  The  first  adventure  was  to  sit 
erect  after  that  long  recumbency,  when  the 
head  swam,  and  you  clutched  the  bedsides, 
dizzy  as  if  perched  on  the  edge  of  Carisenda 
tower  with  the  pavement  eight  score  feet  be- 
low. Next  came  the  passage  of  two  yards 
from  bed  to  window,  an  Argonautic  voy- 
age, when  for  the  first  time  after  length 
of  weeks,  you  saw  earth  face  to  face. 
It  was  but  a  narrow  strip,  upon  three 
sides  enclosed,  but  on  the  fourth  contin- 
uous with  the  ways  of  men,  and  there- 
fore wonderful.  For  beyond  the  corner  of 
the  far  ward,  jutting,  as  it  might  be  Cape 
123 


124  Domu0  Dolotis 

Horn,  it  touched,  they  said,  on  gardens,  and 
these  on  roads;  and  the  roads  joined  other 
roads  that  ran  out  in  their  turn  to  all  the 
compass-points,  to  end  on  thundering  shores, 
where  the  sails  bellied  and  the  bows  plunged, 
bound  for  uttermost  isles  and  far-off  havens 
of  the  blue  sea.  The  sight  of  this  earth-strip 
was  communion  given  again,  and  privation 
ended;  in  your  feebleness,  you  could  have 
wept  for  joy,  if  eyes,  intent  on  such  delight, 
could  ever  have  suffered  tears.  For  though 
in  this  dread  year  there  were  no  flowers  but 
sad  Virginian  blooms,  accidents  and  not  ends 
^f  growth,  this  was  at  once  enchanted  ground; 
its  half-rood  was  the  glorious  world,  and  the 
waters  redounding  with  all  heaven's  light. 
It  was  more  to  you  in  these  days  than  Caesar's 
empire;  memory  and  fancy  never  led  so  brave 
a  rout  as  that  which  set  forth  here  by  this 
peep-hole  of  a  narrow  casement  above  this 
dusty  soil. 

For  the  July  days  were  clear  as  ever  Julius 
knew  them ;  after  those  privativ^e  months,  lost 
May,  lost  June,  their  loveliness  impassioned. 
"Woe  unto  him  that  loseth  patience";  but  to 
him   who   loses   passion   double   woe.     The 


Domii0  Dolod0  125 

glory  of  the  divine  country  rose  between  these 
promontory  wards.  There  breathed  the 
sweetness  of  all  fair  lands  ever  trodden  in 
past  freedom;  all  visions  and  all  sounds  of 
them  streamed  in  on  the  senses  through  this 
strait.  These  were  commemorative  days, 
when  the  unforgettable  came  back  and  was 
recounted.  The  begrimed  old  London  docks 
began,  and  Thames  of  a  thousand  cranes ;  the 
brimmed  and  winding  reaches  took  up  the 
tale  and  the  tide  lipping  at  banks  where  the 
grey  flats  stretch  seaward.  Out  from  the 
home  shores  you  sailed,  into  the  narrow  seas 
first,  and  from  these  into  the  broad;  past 
Spain  and  through  the  Pillars;  on  by  Trin- 
acria  and  the  silt  of  Nile,  down  the  fierce 
ErythrcEan.  Again  on,  to  white  shores 
fringed  with  palms  and  inland  hills  with 
forests  flowering  for  you  like  tall  gardens. 
Cities  rose  for  you  on  ancient  hills,  temples 
on  plains,  where  rivers  wound  glittering  into 
distance,  the  trees  and  bushes  of  the  warm 
lands  sprang  from  your  scant  earth, — olive, 
cypress,  laurel-rose.  For  you  oceans  and 
lands  poured  splendour  of  light.  Yet  the 
dream  never  made  the  actual  sad;  for  sadness 


126  Domu0  Dolocis 

is  by  comparison,  and  here  one  term  was 
gone.  The  present  was  obhterate  and  ex- 
punged; it  ceased  out  of  existence;  a  race  of 
visions  surged,  whitened,  broke  on  it, 
drowned  it  in  surfs  of  light,  till  the  past  lived 
alone  above  bright  water.  The  sound  of 
limb  might  mock  at  all  such  rhapsodies.  But 
then  they  had  never  lain  in  thirst  before 
crawling  to  the  wells  of  light. 

After  this  high  prelude,  joy  passed  into  a 
softer  phase;  you  knew  entrancement,  sitting 
quietly  in  this  still  place,  adoring  earth  and 
sky.  Hour  on  hour  it  was  enough  to  sit, 
letting  the  gladness  ripen.  There  was  no 
wish  to  be  set  free  or  to  pass  beyond  these 
protecting  walls;  the  sense  of  frailness  was 
yet  too  strong.  The  mind  was  stayed  wholly 
on  the  satisfaction  of  this  peace;  it  was  the 
state  of  states,  which  the  faintest  breath 
should  alter  and  lightest  change  needs  must 
lessen;  let  it  abide,  then,  you  prayed,  in  the 
poise  of  its  miraculous  perfection.  The 
thought  rose,  rich  in  comfort,  that  if  age 
knows  any  comparable  joy,  it  has  a  treasure 
laid  up  beyond  thieving;  if,  in  brief  pause 
and    interlude    of   mid-life,    mere    weakness 


Domu0  Dolotis  127 

brought  such  love  of  calm,  how  easy  should 
the  last  acceptance  be,  when  all  that  remained 
of  life  were  pause  before  last  issue?  The 
soul  had  now  glory  of  great  ease,  not  after- 
wards surpassed;  the  bliss  of  that  first  re- 
union with  earth  made  these  hours  supreme. 
Even  when,  on  a  later  day,  strong  and 
friendly  hands  bore  you  to  a  garden  aflame 
with  roses,  of  which  the  first  sight  was  almost 
pain,  such  seemed  their  splendour,  the  ecstasy 
of  freedom  was  never  quite  like  this.  For 
between  that  garden  and  the  house  of  pain 
there  intervened  a  stretch  of  road  with  traffic, 
and,  beside  it,  ranged  houses  with  windows 
full  of  wares.  It  was  the  invading  world, 
and  every  time  you  went  this  way,  a  sadness 
crept  in  among  your  joys.  Noise  of 
thronged  life,  like  clashing  of  wet  cymbals, 
broke  sinister  upon  your  music;  it  spoke 
of  time  tasked,  overshadowed,  marred  by 
crowding  cares  which  none  should  any  longer 
fend  from  you;  it  reminded  of  an  end,  of  an 
unmooring,  when  you  must  push  out  from 
this  haven,  and  steer  a  course,  and  live  re- 
sponsible once  more  among  men.  These  re- 
luctances of  the  nursling  at  the  gate  were 


128  Domu0  Dolon0 

soon  to  pass,  as  the  world  drew  more  strong- 
ly, and  vigour,  reawakening,  spurned  them. 
There  burned  up  fire  of  shame  at  thought  of 
idling  out  one  hour  too  long  in  harbour;  the 
wholesome  belief  grew,  that  to  a  certain 
point  of  regained  strength  there  must  needs 
correspond  a  point  of  time  when  the  sheltered 
life  should  oppress,  and  seem  to  take  the 
breath  from  the  soul. 


XIV 

FROM  that  garden  of  roses  there  had 
been  distant  view  of  field  and  hill, 
green  field,  blue  hill,  with  all  most 
delicate  colours  spread  to  lure  the  eyes  and 
the  heart  after  them.  The  remembered 
beauty  of  the  far  land  wrought  long  un- 
marked beneath  consciousness,  to  emerge  at 
last,  the  one,  the  omnipotent  idea,  to  which 
all  others  yielded.  You  longed  to  be  away 
in  the  country's  depth,  scarce  looked  on  since 
war  began.  It  was  desiderium,  no  fancy 
for  new  things,  but  soul's  hunger  for  things 
loved  before.  And  instantly,  as  thought  of 
the  old  countryside  took  form,  memory 
brought  back  the  hour  when  the  storm  had 
swept  up  the  clear  sky;  and  a  picture  framed 
itself  of  the  tranquil  place  from  which  you 
had  watched  the  huge  cloud  rise.  For  it  was 
now  the  same  time  of  year  as  then,  the 
heaven  had  the  same  blue,  the  earth  must  be 
awakening  under  like  dews.  You  saw  again 
the  old  cottage,  uneven  work  of  two  centuries, 
129 


I30  Domus  Dolocis 

the  mole-loved  sward  before  its  porch,  the 
paths  where  rose-leaves  always  lay.  You 
saw  the  lane  running  past  the  garden  hedge 
to  the  farm  beyond,  and  ending  waywardly  at 
a  field-gate  where,  that  year,  a  mare  grazed 
with  her  foal.  You  felt  again  the  radiance 
of  the  mornings;  the  ears  caught,  clear  as 
then,  the  good  country  noises,  the  clucking  of 
fowls,  the  clink  of  the  roadside  forge.  The 
old  land  smiled  up  out  of  its  rest,  with  every 
feature  plain,  like  the  familiar  face  which 
the  lover  sees  at  will  through  any  darkness, 
and  brings  back  over  any  waste  of  seas.  Into 
that  uttermost  tranquillity  had  crashed  with 
the  most  tremendous  of  all  thunders  the 
fiercest  of  all  bolts,  forged  privily  for  our 
undoing.  Then,  at  the  moment  of  its  fall, 
you  could  not  have  said  what  aspect  of  this 
affliction  should  afterwards  remain  printed 
on  memory  deepest;  it  was  as  though  the 
fulminate  mind  were  cast  prone,  disabled 
from  its  judgment,  paralysed  from  simplest 
use  of  thought.  Now,  looking  back  over  an 
interval,  you  perceived  what  quality  it  was 
which  had  left  behind  the  most  enduring  im- 
press: it  was  a  heart-freezing  strangeness,  an 


Domus  Dolon$  131 

exotic,  cold  iniquity,  as  of  Assyrian  or  Hittite 
minds.  Life  shrank  at  the  sight  of  a  world's 
order  driven  down,  as  it  might  be,  by  chariots 
of  iron;  of  shrines  battered  and  breached  by 
ram-strokes  in  the  name  of  God;  of  trespass 
by  sinister  and  heathen  tyranny  on  places  holy 
with  great  sanctities;  of  foundations  truly 
and  well  laid  for  good  knocked  suddenly 
away,  till  there  was  no  surety  what  should 
stand,  till  elemental  hazard  reigned  and 
probability  had  laws  no  more.  Before  the 
portent  of  its  own  nature  imbruted  thus,  hu- 
manity rose  aghast;  a  drear  shadow  fell 
across  the  world. 

Autumn  had  been  yet  rar  when  the  voice 
of  War  called  over  the  land,  but  symptom  of 
leaf  and  branch  foretold  change  and  a  season 
wearying  gently  to  the  fall  of  the  year.  In 
the  garden  borders,  yellow  and  purple  flowers 
began  prevailing;  the  warm  rose-splendours 
were  rarer  along  hedge  and  wall.  Already 
here  and  there  an  elm  showed  a  golden 
bough;  the  tall  pear-trees  had  tawny  flecks 
among  their  green  branches,  and  stood  more 
beautiful  than  before  against  the  unclouded 
skv.     The  scene  had  no  far  prospect ;  it  was 


132  Domusi  Doloris 

closed  at  a  near  range  by  rising  verdure  upon 
which  a  zone  of  blue  heaven  seemed  laid;  and 
tl.us,  in  appearance  vertically  confined,  it 
charmed  like  a  huge  tapestry,  woven  in  such 
colours  as  never  steeped  spun  thread.  The 
harmonies  of  it  rose  from  the  sward  and  flow- 
erheads  of  rich  dye  below;  they  passed 
through  grey  of  stems  and  yellow  and  green 
of  boughs  to  that  surmounting  azure  across 
which  birds  came  and  went.  Nature,  that 
year,  was  all  absorbed  in  languorous  and  se- 
cret joys  so  deeply  sunken,  that  at  the  hoarse 
cry:  "War!"  she  made  no  sign,  but  dreamed 
on  in  the  ancestral  peace  of  the  English  shires, 
as  her  wont  had  been  through  the  long  un- 
troubled years.  Man  alone  started  at  the  cry, 
and  left  his  dreams;  he  knew  the  call  to  an 
immense  change,  almost  the  ending  of  a 
world.  In  the  great  city,  multitudes  went  to 
and  fro,  who  could  not  work  to-day  as  yester- 
day, feeling  life  turned  into  another  channel, 
and  the  things  of  their  desire  clean  lost  out 
of  mind.  Many  who  in  those  days  passed 
between  town  and  country  with  fear  and  ex- 
altation in  their  hearts  were  now  for  the  first 
time  conscious  of  a  discord  between  Nature 


Domug  fiZ)oIon0  133 

and  themselves.  They  were  troubled  when 
they  came  at  evening  into  quiet  lanes  and 
embowering  woods,  remembering  what  fret- 
fulness  of  strained  life  lashed  at  them  but  a 
short  hour  ago.  Escaped,  they  asked  some 
breath  of  sympathy;  but  the  leaves  rustled 
to  a  heathen  wind;  the  cool  of  evening  spread 
round  them;  the  twilight  flowed  through  the 
ways  of  silence,  like  deep  water  under  boughs. 
It  wounded  them  that  Nature  with  whom 
they  had  lived  in  such  close  communion 
should  calmly  thus  prolong  the  old  life  from 
which  they  were  sundered  by  one  cleaving 
stroke  of  destiny.  It  seemed  to  their  unrea- 
son that  her  colours  should  now  pale  visibly 
with  their  hopes,  that  perceptibly  she 
should  breathe  sighs  for  human  fates.  Had 
they  not  entered  always  into  her  own  moods, 
approving  her  bright  hours,  striding  afield  in 
the  stern  elation  of  her  storms?  For  all 
this  she  returned  them  nothing.  In  the  day 
of  trial  she  smiled  in  an  unmoved  content,  as 
if  she  would  make  plain  to  them  that  her 
fortunes  were  disjoined  from  theirs,  and  that 
if  any  other  thought  moved  them,  it  was  their 
vanity.     They  were  shocked  that  she  should 


134  Domu0  Dolotisi 

continue  at  a  feast  from  which  ill  news  had 
summoned  them  away.  Tempestuous  days 
should  have  agreed  with  their  stirred  souls, 
and  clouds  massing  along  the  hills,  like  the 
cares  on  the  horizon  of  their  lives.  This 
radiance  was  affront.  The  greatest  conflict 
of  all  time  was  begun;  already  the  ranks  of 
the  brave  fell  like  the  swathes  of  this  ripe 
harvest;  hamlets  of  France,  a  few  weeks 
since  secure  as  these,  were  now  abandoned  of 
their  folk  and  lay  pitifully  scathed,  or  heaped 
in  ruin.  But  here  the  still  days  yet  flowed 
into  stiller  nights;  no  sudden  roar  startled 
men  from  sleep,  nor  sound  of  populations  in 
lamentable  flight  along  the  roads;  but  while 
the  moon  sailed  in  the  calm  sky,  faint  ordi- 
nary sounds  rose  out  of  the  quietness,  some 
distant  bark  of  dogs,  or  cock's  crow  before 
the  dawn,  scarce  troubling  the  profound  rest 
of  men  and  things.  They  chafed  at  this 
supremacy  of  old  use  and  wont;  all  here  that 
had  life  lagged  in  arrear  of  the  rushing  time, 
belated,  dull,  insensible.  Europe  was  over 
the  verge  of  the  unknown,  swept  towards  tre- 
mendous hours.  Yet  here,  through  every 
tree  and  flower,  this  most  personal  and  hu- 


Domu0  Doloriis  135 

man  land  of  England  made  no  sign.  It  was 
too  hard  to  them;  It  was  the  treason  of  the 
old  familiar  friend.  Soon  they  were  to  con- 
fess their  own  injustice,  and  to  perceive  them- 
selves helped  in  their  own  despite.  They 
were  to  feel,  in  place  of  anger,  gratefulness 
for  this  sustained  constancy  on  every  side 
about  them;  they  were  to  acknowledge  in  it 
an  example  most  profitable  for  their  guid- 
ance; they  were  to  cease  complaining  that 
Nature  was  natural,  and  no  more.  New 
understanding  came  to  them  first  at  night 
under  the  starry  sky;  their  resentment  was 
still  proof  against  the  hard  light  of  day. 
Can  there  live  witnesses  who  shall  forget 
those  nights  when  sleep  seemed  to  have  left 
the  world,  and  how  they  roamed  out  into 
the  moonlight  where  the  hideous  contrast 
ceased,  and  death  and  life  were  no  longer 
far  apart?  In  such  a  light  the  youthful  and 
wan  dead  might  lie  in  seemliness,  the  moon 
not  too  nearly  searching  out  their  hurt,  or 
making  them  a  spectacle,  like  the  sun;  not 
dwelling  upon  the  particular  and  several  in 
them,  but  drawing  forth  the  universal  quality 
that  each  mortal  bears,  till  they  should  seem 


136  Domu0  Doloris! 

in  this  last  overthrow  not  more  lost  to  life 
than  death.  Nature,  revealed  thus,  was 
faithful,  an  endurer  to  the  end:  the  hearts  of 
the  estranged  turned  again.  So  should  she 
appear  before  the  last  dawn,  when  somewhere 
in  this  unteachable  world  (so  low  had  sunk 
their  hope) ,  men  should  still  be  lying  dead  in 
the  white  fields,  young  soldiers  slain  for  faith. 
You  remembered  also  how,  not  less  than 
the  placid  country,  the  people  had  at  first 
vexed  your  soul;  the  natural  folk  had  de- 
meaned themselves  like  Nature.  They  per- 
formed their  old  tasks  and  went  their  old 
gait  across  the  meadows;  it  seemed,  they 
would  have  used  the  same  deliberate  and 
heavy  tread  though  the  Furies  had  flown 
shrieking  in  their  ears.  In  their  talk  on  the 
inn  bench,  or  at  their  cottage  gates,  the  war 
was  episode,  a  passing  theme,  intrusive  and 
contingent,  subordinate  to  the  greater  ques- 
tions of  wages,  rains  and  markets.  Their 
waggons  jolted  daily  along  the  old  ruts, 
driven  in  the  old  unurgent  way,  while  over 
there  across  the  Channel,  already  no  wheels 
were  rolling  but  those  which  carried  the  sup- 
plies of  armies,  or  wounded  men,  or  huddled 


Domu0  Doloris  137 

families  of  exiles  flying  before  the  hot  breath 
of  war.  To  all  with  nerves  sensitive  to 
swift  impression,  and  apprehending  minds, 
the  rustic  seemed  indeed  what  ancient  poets 
had  called  him,  a  creature  born  of  trunks 
and  oaks  of  knotted  grain;  his  was  the 
inhuman  calm.  To  the  disturbed  spirit, 
shocked  by  the  upheaval  of  a  continent  and 
foreboding  vast  rebounds,  this  clinging  to 
in  ancient  habit  was  not  life,  but  a  vegetable 
and  fibrous  growth  of  cells.  This  folk,  as 
yet  touched  nowhere  near  the  quick  by  thrust- 
ing danger,  seemed  to  accept  war  with  the  un- 
caring mind  of  the  secure;  as  dwellers  far 
from  the  volcanic  zone,  when  earth  quakes  at 
Antipodes,  are  saddened  distantly  and  faintly 
troubled.  The  alerter  mind  was  angered 
that  the  small  concerns  of  usual  days  should 
for  them  go  equal  and  abreast  with  the  march 
of  epical  events;  that  in  a  time  when  the 
pulses  of  the  nations  quickened,  these  rural 
hearts  should  beat  no  faster,  these  dull  eyes 
see  nothing  new.  While  Flanders  home- 
steads blazed  and  crumbled,  their  bricks  dis- 
solving into  clouds  of  ruddy  dust,  here  folk 
of  like  farms  went  calmly  about  their  reap- 


138  Domu0  Dolotis 

ing  and  their  garnering  In  their  forefather's 
way;  the  goodwives  leisurely  prepared  the 
evening  meal  after  the  fashion  of  their 
mothers'  mothers  to  the  third  and  fourth  long 
generation.  The  great  horses  drew  home  the 
harvest  through  the  lanes,  just  as  In  other 
years,  by  places  steeped  In  quietness  or 
charged  with  placid  life,  by  ponds  with  chil- 
dren playing  about  their  brims,  by  Inns  with 
waggons  drawn  before  the  doors,  past  orch- 
ards where  the  red  fruit  waited  the  gatherer's 
hour.  While  they  saw  these  things  and  re- 
membered those,  they  could  have  rent  their 
garments;  their  hearts  were  already  torn. 

But  in  time  the  genius  of  this  folk  became 
in  its  turn  too  strong  for  them.  Their  spirit 
had  honourably  made  protest;  in  the  end  they 
were  drawn  near  to  the  onflow  of  this  fulfil- 
ling life  with  its  immediate  hold  on  things. 
In  the  surrender  they  seemed  to  themselves 
at  the  beginning  as  drugged  men;  It  was  as 
if  some  conquering  fume  from  the  reaped 
poppies  had  stolen  over  their  minds,  till  the 
vision  of  cruelty  and  horror  which  had  left 
them  sleepless  first  swam  In  haze,  then  grad- 
ually dissolved  away.     They  yielded  with  a 


Domu0  Dolotisi  139 

conscience  half  resentful,  as  at  some  advan- 
tage taken  of  them,  but  too  weary  to  begin 
the  struggle  again,  too  deeply  charmed  to 
renew  vain  war.  But  afterwards  they  under- 
stood that  a  major  force  had  vanquished 
them,  an  effluence  from  a  stronger  spirit,  of 
which  they  had  misjudged  the  power.  This 
oak-like  stock  stood  inflexible  for  their  won- 
der; it  rustled  for  nothing  less  than  great 
winds;  tempest  must  rise  to  wrench  its 
branches.  Compared  with  it,  they  felt  them- 
selves frail  reeds,  bruised  at  a  touch,  sighing 
at  a  breath.  Insensibly  they  admitted  a  new 
wisdom,  learned  from  the  plain  minds  once 
ignorantly  dispraised.  They  humbled  them- 
selves; ashamed,  but  comforted,  they  sat  at 
hobnailed  feet.  Once  unrepentantly  thus 
abased,  they  perceived  great  quality  of 
manhood  in  this  deliberate  steadfast  folk, 
so  slow  to  assemble  few  ideas,  so  averse 
from  giving  belief  a  form.  Men  of  oth- 
er races  might  use  longer  sight  and  swift- 
er judgment;  they  might  follow  a  whole 
circumference  round  while  this  peasantry 
still  gaped  upon  one  point.  Yet  some- 
how  in   the    end   advantage    seemed    often 


I40  £)omu0  Dolon0 

with  the  unhastening  minds,  which  had 
absorbed  essential  truth,  as  it  were,  through 
roots,  as  the  oaks  draw  February's  rain 
into  the  sap  of  May.  Contemptuous  of 
much  ado  with  logic,  they  had  made  them- 
selves in  peaceful  times  plain  notions  of  free 
life;  they  knew  the  points  of  Freedom. 
Large  was  the  comfort  to  the  stranger  in 
their  midst,  finding  them  in  the  hour  of 
danger  embattled  in  a  spiritual  stronghold 
older  than  Norman  keeps.  It  was  an  earnest 
that,  come  what  perils  might,  England  should 
find  a  way  through  the  dark  wood  as  a 
tracker  finds  the  trail,  while  her  calculating 
foes  should  theorise  away  the  issue.  They 
were  glad  for  that  deep  instinct  in  affairs, 
which  is  but  reason  long  laid  down,  and  ma- 
tured like  an  old  wine.  A  draught  of  it  now 
rejoiced  their  hearts. 

If  ever  afterwards,  in  a  forgetfulness,  they 
chafed  against  rural  wisdom,  it  was  no  longer 
with  the  former  pride.  Some  of  the  fault 
had  lain  with  themselves;  they  had  forgotten, 
what  manner  of  wealth  lay  in  the  English 
land  and  race.  Now  that  they  had  rewon 
the  lost,  they  could  be  glad  with  a  whole 


Domu0  Dolotis!  141 

heart  for  the  harvest  gathered  in;  once  more 
they  could  follow  with  content  the  ploughing 
of  new  fields,  and  the  ritual  of  the  labourer's 
year.  With  thankfulness  they  could  watch 
one  quiet  work  succeed  another,  as  if  no  guns 
had  thundered  over  Flanders  since  Ramillies 
or  Oudenarde.  On  one  side,  in  this  war, 
was  strength  innate  and  ever-during,  on  the 
other,  disease  of  force  in  paroxysm  that 
should  itself  consume  the  body  through  which 
it  raged.  Therefore,  their  pain  soothed, 
they  watched  autumn  quietly  come  on  with 
the  old  pomps,  lighting  up  all  the  land  with 
glory  of  undestroying  fires.  They  saw  the 
cottages  beat  off  the  rains,  and  grey  homes 
that  stood  forth  clear  amid  falling  leaves, 
impregnable  of  storms.  They  seemed  to  per- 
ceive in  the  familiar  land  the  stored  mellow- 
ness of  a  thousand  years,  resting  like  a  bloom 
upon  its  strength;  this  was  known  England 
still,  unchanged  for  Armageddon.  These 
also  were  her  true  men.  As  the  younger  of 
them  vanished  at  the  call,  going  with  few 
words,  as  if  about  some  private  business,  the 
land  of  yesterday  with  its  pleasant  ease 
seemed  also  to  pass;  it  went  with  them,  it  was 


142  Domu0  23olon0 

dead,  it  was  gone.  Another  England  rose, 
old  England,  used  to  wars,  advanced  into  the 
storming  seas  like  some  promontory  of  her 
own  Atlantic  shores. 

That  England  must  needs  now  rise  in 
might;  there  was  no  choice.  A  bishop  of 
her  Church  two  centuries  before  had  put  her 
case  in  words  fit  for  her  long  remembrance. 
He  said  that  it  was  with  nations  as  with  indi- 
vidual men;  that  he  who  should  stand  and  see 
another  stripped  or  hacked  in  pieces,  and  not 
at  all  concern  himself  in  rescue,  commits  mur- 
der with  his  eyes  and  sheds  blood  by  not 
striking  a  blow.  Our  country  was  now  such 
bystander;  one  course  alone  lay  open:  to  do 
no  murder  after  that  kind.  The  day  on 
which  she  took  that  course  should  remain  a 
day  for  anniversaries  as  long  as  her  race  en- 
dured. The  greatest  day  in  a  man's  life, 
and  the  best  rewarded.  Is  that  on  which  he 
gives  the  utmost  for  the  most  loved:  there 
is  no  day  between  birth  and  death  in  memory 
near  to  this  for  sweetness.  And  the  worst 
day  and  heaviest  in  retribution  is  that  on 
which  he  withholds  the  perfect  gift.  It  is 
the  same  with  peoples,  when  the  hour  comes 


Domu0  Doloris  143 

for  them  to  be  tried,  whether  they  will  do 
the  fair  deed,  or  whether  they  will  forbear. 
For  souls  of  men  or  nations  the  hour  flies 
fast;  they  must  say  swiftly  what  they  will 
do;  it  is  past  them  as  the  wind  passes,  nor 
comes  with  the  same  gift  again.  A  point  of 
time  shall  fix  the  repute  of  a  generation;  in 
a  moment  a  race  may  unmake  a  secular  fame. 
It  may  do  mortal  hurt  to  its  own  body,  since 
for  the  deepest  wounds  nations  are  vulnerable 
only  to  themselves. 

The  knowledge  that  without  delaying  we 
had  made  right  choice,  we,  the  slow  people 
and  the  unprepared,  was  sweetness  crushed 
into  the  bitter  cup  at  our  lips.  Grandeur  of 
sacrifice  flamed  up  before  us,  fire  from  an 
altar  too  long  cold;  it  remained  with  a  clear 
glow  through  the  months  when  the  cause  of 
Freedom  swayed  imperilled,  and  without  it 
had  gone  down  after  the  great  causes  of 
mankind  which  men  have  not  upheld.  When 
the  waters  of  affliction  rose,  it  burned  higher 
with,  here  and  there,  as  contrary  winds 
tossed  it,  a  smoke  upon  its  crest,  yet  ever 
strong  and  clear;  it  shone  out  over  the  full 
spate  of  cruelty  and  violence  now  foaming 


144  Domusi  Dolotis 

through  the  world.  It  was  the  beacon  for 
an  earth  profaned  by  effrontery  of  madness; 
the  insolence  of  tyrants  under  it  was  lit  up 
plain  as  Xerxes'  sin.  It  was  the  one  thing 
that  stayed  and  kindled  when  the  walls  of 
fair  life  seemed  fallen  away,  the  noble  fabric 
cast  upon  a  heap,  a  temple  that  one  heave 
of  the  earth  flings  down.  Save  for  the  light 
it  shed,  we  had  scarce  dared  make  answer 
to  the  question  asked  by  all  succeeding  ages  : 
what  profit  in  wealth  and  knowledge,  if 
tyranny  used  both  for  crime;  what  gain,  if 
throned  concupiscence  might  wrest  all  to  its 
own  ends?  How  was  new  science,  devilishly 
suborned,  better  than  the  old  hired  simple- 
ness?  A  single  day  sent  to  annihilation  more 
lives  than  many  ancient  wars :  how  in  this  was 
the  world  profited?  What  dark  perversity 
controlled  man's  way,  if  ever,  at  his  imagined 
highest,  lust  of  destruction  grew  with  power, 
and  the  rivalry  of  peoples  still  found  no  path 
but  riverways  of  blood?  What  civilization 
might  that  be  for  boasting,  wherein  Peace, 
daughter  of  Righteousness  was  ever  and 
again  dishonoured;  in  which,  at  periods  fixed 
by  insensate  greed  and  pride,   youth  went 


Domug  Doloris!  145 

down  in  promiscuous  death,  crowned,  for  a 
funeral  wreath,  with  the  green  hope  of  com- 
ing time?  How  pitiful  the  thought  that  at 
the  nod  of  some  poor  Picrochole  the  peoples 
of  a  continent  must  go  to  massacre;  let  but 
some  little  country  lie  convenient  to  him,  and 
his  armies  should  slip  leash  at  hint  of  flat- 
terers in  his  ear:  "the  great  Soldan  is  not  to 
be  compared  with  thee."  If  the  human  race 
must  still  give  over  into  red  hands  the  inven- 
tions made  for  use  of  wisdom,  then  verily 
we  might  pray  that  a  scheme  of  things  so 
marred  and  blemished  should  return  to  the 
elements  from  which  it  rose,  to  be  built  anew, 
this  time  divinely.  For  work  of  civilising 
arts  was  all  too  delible  and  frail  if  it  brought 
no  lasting  good  to  man,  but  evermore  these 
shifts  and  cancellings,  these  returns  around 
old  curves,  this  negative  and  cyclic  way.  In 
our  bitterness  we  murmured  now  that  this 
seen  world  was  miscreation,  so  deeply  flawed 
it  stood  before  us.  "Let  it  go,"  we  said, 
"let  it  crumble  into  all  its  atoms.  If  the 
loveliest  and  best  must  know  worst  ruin,  let 
the  whole  at  once  be  dust."  There  were 
hours  when  sorrow  crept  up  over  the  heart 


146  Domus  Dolon0 

like  dank  air,  as  the  autumn  night  sets  in 
with  rain.  There  were  hours  of  yet  dead- 
lier chill,  when  the  warmth  seemed  waning 
out  of  all  life,  as  if  the  central  heat  of  earth 
died  untimely,  and  the  one  force  left  to  unite 
and  bind  were  such  rigour  of  fierce  cold  as 
changes  the  falling  stream  to  ice.  For  in 
the  degradation  of  continuous  war  all  fair 
activities  declined,  bright  influences  darkened. 
The  power  to  take  impress  of  various  life 
was  starved  with  life  itself.  Men,  driven 
like  pack-beasts  on  the  road,  dared  look  aside 
no  more  towards  things  delicate  and  tranquil; 
their  eyes  were  for  immediate  ruts  and  pit- 
falls, all  their  thoughts  for  the  lash.  In  the 
long  banishment  from  serenity  we  grew  sav- 
age; we  hardened  in  a  harder  world.  We 
heard  less  surely  the  softer  echoes,  less 
certainly  perceived  finer  distinctions.  We 
feared  to  be  made  coarser  for  all  time,  no 
longer  such  instruments  to  interpret  as  be- 
fore. We  were  goaded  on  miry  and  low 
ways;  it  might  be,  we  should  never  reascend 
the  hills.  As  humanity  was  driven  back  to 
the  defence  of  the  bare  life,  rich  thought 
should  come  to  beggary,  knowledge  pine  un- 


Domu0  Dolotis  147 

cared  for,  as  if  the  benefactor  should  starve 
upon  straw.  All  powers  that  multiplied  life 
must  fail  if  whole  races  stood  ever  at  fierce 
grips  to  make  the  consummate  ruin  sure. 
The  Black  Death  had  maimed  Europe  for  a 
hundred  years.  What  should  this  Red 
Death  do? 


XV 

THE  light  of  sacrifice,  burning  at  first 
upon  near  altars,  had  been  withdrawn 
from  us  as  months  passed,  a  remoter, 
whiter  flame.  It  changed  only  to  become  a 
star,  of  which  the  function  is  less  to  kindle, 
but  to  guide.  It  gathered  round  it  other 
great  lights,  giving  new  splendour  to  the 
heavens  which  in  peace  had  never  thus  su- 
premely blazed;  there  had  lacked  to  them  this 
depth  of  mother-darkness,  embosoming  the 
white  fires.  It  was  so  that  dire  war  merited ; 
it  became  the  revealer;  in  the  intensity  of 
its  blackness,  orbs  and  constellations  were 
recovered,  long  lost  to  us  in  the  dimness  of 
less  absolute  night.  None  living  through 
these  times  might  truthfully  deny  that  war 
brought  with  both  hands  divers  gifts  of  price, 
of  which  peace  was  no  such  giver.  Kant's 
shaming  word  still  held  good  after  the  cen- 
tury of  our  swiftest  progress:  no  power 
known  till  now  had  wrought  like  war  to 
evoke  certain  unfulfilled  nobilities  which  lie 
148 


Domu0  Dolonis  149 

within  the  promise  of  human  nature.  There 
were  ways  in  which  war  conspicuously  served 
both  heart  and  mind :  it  struck  fire  from  the 
one ;  the  other  it  made  know  foundations.  It 
freed  right  feelings  which  peace  by  false  pro- 
prieties and  strait  customs  had  kept  from 
freedom.  It  went  through  the  labyrinths  of 
our  life  like  a  conflagration,  ruining  much 
superstructure,  but  for  the  first  time  letting 
sites  appear.  Men  saw  at  last  what  lay 
round  about  them,  and  on  what  rocks  their 
cities  stood. 

War  bonded.  Before  its  coming,  old 
threatening  cracks  had  spread  in  the  fabric 
of  the  State,  new  fissures  opened.  Now,  out 
of  that  dissidence  the  sacred  union  sprang. 
Men  learned  to  live  after  the  need  of  kind, 
forgetting  their  hard  and  several  ambitions. 
War  dealt  great  blows  at  meanness.  Since 
earth  had  store  to  be  dispersed,  none  ever  so 
magnificently  squandered;  he  scattered  with 
the  noble  gesture  of  the  sower,  a  reproach 
to  a  coffering  and  self-indulging  age.  He 
set  the  generous  impulse  of  abandonment  in 
the  hearts  of  thousands,  who  learned  of  him 
first  that  it  is  better  to  be  reduced  in  fortune 


I50  Domu0  C)olon0 

than  in  virtue.  He  lanced  the  imposthume 
of  much  wealth  and  peace  that  for  fatal  end 
was  growing  inward.  He  was  kindly  also  to 
the  world's  prodigals,  knowing  them  capable 
of  the  sublime  profusion,  and  sure  that  none 
could  make  the  great  stake  with  such  a  grace, 
or  more  to  the  royal  manner  born.  He 
called;  they  answered.  They  who  would  not 
live  well  in  a  land  of  traffickers,  at  his  sum- 
mons died  well  for  a  land  of  fighting  men. 
War  brought  vision  of  essential  things.  In 
its  prospect  the  great  matters  rose  up  sheer; 
they  stood  discernible  in  a  wide  place;  they 
seemed  to  stand  alone.  We  looked  on  the 
very  frame  of  things;  we  rejoiced  in  the  bare 
grandeur;  we  construed  intelligible  life.  The 
times  ceased  to  consist  with  subtleness  of 
gradation;  and  the  dreams  being  gone,  the 
shadows  that  affianced  them  were  loved  no 
more.  One  working  to  allay  misery  in  an 
invaded  land  told  how  the  austerity  of  life 
changed  its  expression  on  the  tongues  of  the 
warring  peoples.  In  the  minds  of  men 
driven  to  bay,  the  need  for  long  vocabularies 
or  words  had  ended;  plain  terms  ruled  alone, 
the  necessary  signs, — food,  drink,  love,  life, 


Domu0  Doloris  151 

death.  The  grand  and  tragical  abbreviation 
of  all  living  enforced  clear  sense.  Few  and 
short  words  sufficed  for  the  resolve  of  men, 
the  immeasurable  grief  of  women.  War 
called  for  Spartan  life,  for  Dorian  language. 
None  wished,  as  once,  to  speak  elaborately  of 
small  things,  but  with  simplicity  of  great 
ones.  In  the  field,  two  lines  sufficed  for  a 
hero's  praise.  Such  speech  was  in  whole  ac- 
cord with  the  severity  of  mass  and  plane 
which  composed  the  picture  of  the  world. 
For  the  gentle  passages  were  gone,  and  the 
tempered  oppositions.  It  was  as  if  a  soft 
English  landscape  went  suddenly  aside,  and 
left  Estremadura.  Here  were  cast  the  white 
light  and  the  black  shadow;  it  was  plain 
majesty  of  things  known:  majestas  coffnita 
rerum. 

To  sum  all,  out  of  the  ravening  beast  came 
sweetness,  from  carrion  honey  of  the  hills. 
The  shame  was  upon  man,  who  would  neither 
remove  the  lion-carcass  from  his  roadsides, 
nor  better  keep  his  bees.  By  his  default, 
war  still  produced  the  Hyblsean  sweetness;  he 
was  true  author  of  the  foul  hiving.  Peace 
might  have  cared  for  the  golden  combs;  he 


152  Domu0  Dolotiis 

would  not  suffer  it,  giving  her  a  gross  ease. 
All  the  shame  was  his;  it  were  bare  honesty 
to  pay  war  that  due  of  praise  which  his  own 
folly  had  made  just.  For  the  shame  were 
doubled  upon  his  head  did  he  stand  forth 
hypocrite,  denouncing  bloody  and  corrupt 
war  with  the  carcass-honey  upon  his  fingers. 
Let  him  rather  see  to  the  tenure  of  clean 
hives,  that  in  future  time  there  might  be  less 
truth  than  now  in  the  old  sneers  that  peace 
is  for  nothing  but  to  rust  iron  and  increase 
tailors,  war  alone  sprightly,  waking,  audible 
and  full  of  vent. 

For  man,  awakened  to  this  shame,  there 
was  but  one  course:  to  be  otherwise  pur- 
veyed. For  his  life,  he  must  be  replenished 
of  these  virtues;  he  were  as  well  dead  with- 
out them.  In  the  past,  the  clean  hands  not 
offering,  he  had  even  taken  from  the  foul; 
in  the  coming  time  under  like  conditions  he 
would  so  take  again.  If  there  were  made 
no  worthier  provision,  war  should  still  come 
and  go,  and  carry  off  beyond  our  borders 
that  which  should  be  restored  on  no  other 
wheels.  Man  should  live  on,  as  now,  shame- 
fully obliged,  at  each  return  lowlier  degraded, 


Domu0  Dolotis  153 

as  better  knowing  his  connivanice.  Peace 
whom  he  should  have  prepared  and  trained 
in  the  nurture  of  these  high  qualities,  as  her 
life's  reason,  should  still  abstain  from  them, 
liking  her  sloth  and  his.  If  we  could  learn 
no  better  providence  of  these  virtues,  then 
ever  and  again  upon  the  summer  and  the  long 
bright  days  there  should  come  sultriness  and 
storm,  and  the  clangour  of  the  iron  chariot, 
as  once  more  war  brought  manhood  back  to 
men.  For  Peace  should  never  learn  until 
man  schooled  himself;  that  which  he  would 
not  bear  in  his  own  mind  he  could  not  put 
into  her  heart.  There  was  needed  for  our 
new  history  not  the  mad  law  of  fits  and 
starts,  the  furious  blazing  up  from  the  inert 
and  flickering  back  to  it,  but  one  strong  ten- 
sion of  our  life  upon  those  virtues  as  supreme 
and  cardinal  to  peace.  For  till  that  were 
done,  there  should  be  no  more  enduring  pe- 
riods under  kind  stars  than  now  there  are,  but 
all  should  come  round  again  under  signs  of 
death  and  the  fiery  Trigon. 

That  such  new  peace  might  be,  there 
must  first  be  a  new  pressure  upon  man's  loose 
ease,  to  awaken  and  keep  roused  in  his  mind 


154  Domu0  Dolons 


its  slumbering  spirit.  And  it  seemed  that  he 
were  best  constrained,  might  but  the  sense 
of  the  great  circumference  stir  in  him,  as  in 
the  hard  ancient  time  when  the  tribe  was  the 
confessed  source  of  all  goods,  when  not  a 
man  but  knew  his  life-blood  lent  him  from 
that  fount  and  owing  to  it  every  hour.  He 
that  so  felt,  though  he  beat  his  clothes  out  of 
a  tree's  bark,  had  yet  that  which  lacked  to 
his  descendants  in  their  fine  linen.  For  they 
dwelled  all  dissolute  in  little  septs  and  kin- 
ships as  though  they  lived  at  large  within  a 
sky-line ;  riches  and  knowledge  they  might 
have  won,  but  in  loss  of  that  old  communion 
they  had  jeopardised  their  souls.  Bitter 
need  there  was  now  for  them  to  feel  some 
faster  line  enclosing,  to  band  them  and  urge 
inward,  a  circumference  drastic  upon  the 
sense,  that  the  touch  and  feel  of  commonalty 
might  once  more  rule  their  lives.  Then 
might  that  unfeigned  fellowship  return,  now 
warm  in  us  only  amid  perils,  or  about  our 
own  hearths,  or  in  heat  of  factions, — return 
to  its  primaeval  use,  which  were  nothing  less 
than  this,  to  make  our  whole  race  tribal  to 
us  and  our  blood  its  trust.     And  by  what 


Domu$  Dolotig  155 

more  than  savage  apathy  did  we  fail  thus  to 
feel  the  interdepending  and  coherence  of  our 
souls,  life  being  a  voyage,  and  deep  waters 
under  us,  and  ourselves  shipmates  all  our 
days?  Tabula  distinguimur:  a  plank's  thick- 
ness keeps  us  floating.  We  are  embarked 
together  between  one  cutwater  and  rudder, 
cabined  within  one  ship's  ribs.  Yet  in  the 
calms,  or  on  gently  heaving  waters,  we  do  not 
rightly  feel  the  committal  of  our  fate,  nor  is 
the  right  fellowship  engendered  in  us;  there 
must  rage  a  storm  before  we  remember 
that  we  navigate;  the  water  must  be  risen 
high  in  the  hold  before  the  shipmate  spirit 
kindles,  the  very  rail  awash  before  it  has 
burned  bright.  Then  often  it  is  too  late; 
Nature,  roughly  intervening,  quenches  all. 


XVI 

AT  this  point  thought,  meteorically  wan- 
dering, was  fetched  down  earthwards. 
Such  shipmate's  sense  was  here,  all 
around  you,  manifest  in  each  deed  and  pur- 
pose; in  this  place  of  remedies  the  catholicon 
or  universal  cure  existed  and  was  dispensed. 
You  saw  now  why  the  place  itself  was  ever 
as  a  ship  to  you,  remembering  how  the  first 
entry  had  been  like  nothing  but  your  coming 
aboard,  most  miserable  supercargo,  among 
beings  vital  with  mutual  and  contributory 
life,  whose  anchors  were  all  up  for  no  coast- 
wise trafficking,  but  voyage  down  under  the 
line  and  new  stars.  Here  was  the  sense  of 
life  interdepending,  here  the  true  conclusion 
drawn,  that  with  the  right  enemy  confront- 
ing, peace  is  not  rest  but  action;  peace  is  one 
state  with  war.  Not  the  old  war  of  man 
against  man,  internecine,  but  of  man  against 
the  monsters  harming  his  life,  greeds, 
hatred,  cruelties,  envies,  violences  and  all 
their  brood,  a  war  knightly  and  saintly,  fore- 
156 


Domu0  Dolon0  157 

shadowed  in  old  championships  of  legend  and 
prowess  of  your  Perseus  or  Saint  George,  to 
be  achieved  at  last  in  the  knightliness  of 
whole  nations.  A  war  in  a  new  sense  civil, 
with  a  new  truth  passing  as  a  service  of  lustra- 
tion over  the  earth,  and  that  not  only  at  great 
interval  or  period,  rounding  slow  to  point, 
but  always,  and  through  the  continuous  reach 
of  time.  By  going  a  warfare,  by  that  only, 
this  spirit  were  of  force  to  make  peace  new. 
For  that  which  is  out  of  every  fray  and  above 
all  battle  shall  never  pluck  man  out  of  wrath, 
but  that  alone  shall  begin  salvation  which  is 
down  with  him  in  the  broil  and  at  his  right 
hand  the  whole  press  through.  In  which 
place,  pre-eminently,  the  soldiers  of  this  serv- 
ice stood,  amid  foul  things  and  shed  blood,  at 
grips  with  the  old  enemies  sickness  and 
Death;  nor  less,  though  they  themselves 
might  not  everywhere  perceive  it,  with  the  ac- 
complices of  these,  which  more  subtly  arise 
against  the  soul.  In  the  sacred  impulse  to 
beat  off  and  rescue,  without  count  of  cost, 
they  made  their  battle  likest  to  the  sacrificial 
strife  that  war  is,  when  he  returns  out  of  his 


158  Domu0  Dolon0 

rest  with  those  ravished  virtues  bright  upon 
his  helm. 

Certain  it  was  that  here  homunculus , 
wrecked  but  magnificently  unforsaken,  re- 
membered as  never  till  now  his  navigation. 
He  saw  that  the  devotion,  at  once  ideal  and 
practical,  manifest  here  was  verily  of  the  kind 
for  which  creation  travailed,  of  which  the 
triumph  in  all  provinces  of  life  should  crown 
the  world's  desire.  The  old  peace  of  quies- 
cence, of  fai  ease,  of  strait  devotions,  was  the 
old  war's  helpmeet;  the  peace  of  the  new  time 
should  be  one  with  the  new  war.  It  was 
therefore  that  the  spirit  which  now  wrought 
under  his  eyes  took  on  for  him  momentous- 
ness,  significant  beyond  its  seeming.  For  it 
had  become  to  him  the  earnest  of  that  uni- 
versal spirit  which  might  reign  if  men  had 
nobleness  to  pay  with  their  own  persons  the 
cost  of  finer  life,  serving  the  Whole.  No 
matter  that  the  place  was  small  and  the 
stream  of  its  force  a  runlet ;  it  stood  for  that 
which  should  gush  out  like  the  fountains  of 
Orontes.  If  but  that  price  were  paid,  peace 
should  be  waged  against  all  enemies  of  human 
health,  not  against  physical  alone;  it  should 


Domu0  Doloris  159 

give  assault  first  on  that  chill  apathy  of  man 
for  all  not  of  his  close  company  which  nar- 
rows and  degrades  his  soul.  For  the  huge- 
grown  bulk  of  peoples  spread  now  scarce 
pervious  to  the  old  sense  of  kind.  The  loyal- 
ty of  tribesmen  failed  in  the  vast  body;  com- 
munities thus  swollen  fell  into  lethargy,  con- 
scious no  longer  of  their  whole  selves.  The 
quick-felt  brotherhood  that  leaps  out  to  aid, 
that  stands  the  instant  proof,  lived  only  in 
smaller  groups  or  factions;  it  was  Internal  to 
them  and  of  an  excluding  spirit,  so  that  the 
virtue  which  bound  close  within  was  a  sun- 
dering vice  without.  To  send  through  the 
immense  circumference  of  peoples  the  con- 
sciousness of  kind  once  vivid  in  ancestral 
tribes,  this  was  the  world's  need  and  the  way 
of  regeneration.  But  by  what  confederacy 
and  in  what  time  should  such  task  be  ac- 
complished, commensurate  as  it  was  with  such 
dropsical  and  misshapen  vastness?  This,  as 
it  was  among  the  greatest  problems  set,  so  it 
should  be  among  the  most  glorious  in  solu- 
tion. A  task  that  might  indeed  seem  above 
human  scope,  though  millions  were  agreed  for 
the  fulfilment.     For  how  should  there  come 


i6o  Domus!  Dolotis 

lightly  a  transfusion  of  the  mass  with  good 
will,  when  such  groups  as  were  now  ordered 
in  their  several  distinction  were  banded  for 
the  welfare  of  their  own  close  company,  and 
turned  almost  with  a  single  mind  towards 
material  things?  It  was  no  marvel  that  the 
sky  hung  low  with  clouds  of  envy  and  malice, 
rolled  up  to  such  head  that  scarcely  were 
there  hope  of  a  fresh  air  to  breathe  till  they 
were  burst  in  storm.  Yet  all  the  greater  were 
the  joy,  if,  with  fair  weather  come,  and 
diluvium  sluiced  away,  the  soul  of  noble  help- 
fulness were  found  laborious  yet  to  search 
out  and  pierce  the  Whole,  brought  safe  out  of 
that  flood  by  such  discipline  as  that  ruling  all 
life  here. 

By  thoughts  like  these  the  mind  made  for 
itself  the  fancy  that  the  final  cause  of  hos- 
pitals was,  after  all,  the  soul.  Houses  of 
Pain,  ostensibly  mending  bodies,  in  truth 
amended  hearts  and  minds:  they  were  seats 
of  vital  learning.  The  fellowship  of  spirits 
that  guided  them  and  wrought  in  them  was 
ordered  for  greater  end  than  outwardly  ap- 
peared. Here  was  no  mere  physical  ado,  or 
narrow  practice,  but  an  expounding  of  salu- 


Domu0  Doloris;  i6i 

tary  life,  a  large  and  catholic  profession. 
Here  was  confederacy  of  master  and  scholar 
for  spread  of  knowledge ;  here  was  not  school 
alone,  but  university,  home  of  banded  minds, 
universitas  inagistorum  et  scholarium,  a 
brotherhood  and  sisterhood  leagued  to  shed 
light  abroad.  These  were  collegiate  houses, 
wherein  sufferer  and  server  learned  and 
taught  together.  The  end  of  their  research 
lay  far  beyond  scope  of  restored  limbs  or  tis- 
sues; the  range  of  it  was  nowise  confined  to 
the  little  county  of  surgery  and  physic.  Many 
labourers  in  these  walls  might  deem  they 
served  for  manling's  bones;  manling  might 
deem  he  suffered  for  no  greater  thing.  In 
truth,  they  were  here  for  a  larger  end,  not 
less  real  because  few  always  thought  of  it, 
and  some  even  went  forth  again  into  the 
world,  their  time  ended,  without  having 
understood  what  august  purpose  they  had 
served.  Hospitals  were  universities;  they 
taught.  The  conviction  of  this  grew  from 
deepening  root,  until  amazement  held  you 
that  behind  such  thin  veil  of  the  ostensible, 
the  real  in  its  clear  line  and  salience  should 
still  remain  unseen.    It  has  been  said  of  other 


i62  Domus  Dolotis! 

universities  that  the  wonder  of  their  exist- 
ence is  lost  through  our  mere  thoughtlessness. 
They  have  shone  in  our  midst  so  long  that 
habit  makes  them  natural  sights  beside  our 
way,  in  our  passage  disregarded.  The  fire 
of  intellectual  life  burning  in  them  is  so  long 
kindled,  and  tended  in  such  detachment,  that 
amid  the  world's  flaring  business  it  goes  un- 
marked. Yet  if  ever  there  were  an  activity 
of  men  to  surprise  the  bygoer  into  a  pause, 
and  make  him  marvel,  it  were  surely  this;  for 
what  is  it  but  almost  miracle,  that  in  a  world 
hot  after  utilities  a  whole  society  should  live 
unanimous  for  unmaterial  things,  and  in  the 
single  greed  of  knowledge?  Miraculous  one 
day  it  should  appear,  when  man  shall  have 
set  him  down  awhile  to  rest,  and  slowly  it 
shall  grow  wonderful  to  him  that  while  he 
went  heavily,  a  surfeit  of  material  things 
clogging  his  soul,  a  few,  living  in  a  rare  ab- 
stinence, lightly  and  easily  worked  on.  One 
day  all  universities  should  be  known  for 
places  of  light.  But  now  we  are  all 
passers  by,  less  in  malevolence,  than  by  fault 
of  unimagining  minds,  speaking  of  these 
places  as  indeed  good  and  worthy  to  be  en- 


Domu0  Dolon0  163 

dowed,  but  established  for  a  life  apart  from 
us,  and  a  show  for  strangers.  In  the  former 
years,  when  those  intellectual  fires  had  shone 
for  you,  it  had  waked  scorn  in  your  younger 
heart  that  man,  having  a  mind  wherewith  to 
compare  and  judge,  could  thus  indifferently 
regard  the  high  beacons,  all  the  while  using  in 
ignorance  their  unacknowledged  rays.  It  had 
passed  the  understanding  of  fresh  youth  that 
for  immediate  ease  or  profiting  he  could  let 
all  that  light's  beauty  and  warmth  of  splen- 
dour go.  And  now  you  stood  yourself  in 
the  like  case,  convicted  of  the  same  engross- 
ment, as  one  who  had  kept  the  mule-track 
over  the  moor,  blind  to  beacon  and  star.  The 
House  of  Pain  was  beacon,  hearth  and  foun- 
dation of  sound  learning,  nor  quite  so  undis- 
coverably  concealed  that  with  the  profane 
crowd  you  should  have  gone  by  profanest.  All 
this  generation  had  gone  by,  well-willing,  but 
incurious  and  unaware  what  scope  and  range 
the  light  had,  which  they  misunderstood.  We 
had  all  pressed  by  together,  rapt  in  the  ap- 
portioning of  little  honours  and  precedences, 
or  accounts  of  mine  and  thine ;  so  full  we  were 
of  small  ambitions,  we  scarce  marked  these 


i64  Domu$  Dolotis 

gates,  but  to  hope  that  in  our  own  matter  we 
might  never  go  under  their  lintels.  The 
high  significance,  the  large  gift  of  light,  now 
felt  so  fluvial  to  you  and  exundant  over  your 
ways,  had  been  less  in  that  strange  past  than 
the  candle  of  your  strait  affairs;  all  the  ful- 
filled theory  of  selfless  life  had  been  to 
you  no  more  than  an  unpleasing  business 
with  anatomies,  or  a  dexterity  to  cut  and 
bind.  Though  once  you  had  esteemed 
yourself  a  lover  of  every  hearth  that  shed 
light,  you  had  clean  neglected  these.  In  a 
fastidiousness,  or  a  fear,  or  a  misliking  you 
had  wilfully  turned  and  looked  away.  For 
that  offence  shame  now  fell  on  you.  The  thin 
blood  of  the  patient  tingled  in  your  veins. 

So  that  contentedly  you  now  hailed  the 
happy  violence  of  fortune  which  had  flung 
you  into  the  light,  ensuring  a  long  stay,  and 
time  to  try  for  your  degree.  Here  was  intro- 
duction into  a  new  world  and  atmosphere  of 
which  the  memory  should  last  out  your  days. 
The  event  might  be  compared  with  none  but 
that  which  long  ago  had  opened  to  you  the 
valley-heads  of  thought,  where  seemed  to 
stand  high  over  life  peaks  signalling  dawn, 


Domus  Dolotig  165 

at  their  feet  outflow  of  waters  quick  from  the 
rock,  and  everywhere  all  manner  of  un- 
touched dewiness  and  freshness  under  large 
heaven,  to  entrance  the  amazed,  glad  mind. 
Here,  not  less  than  there,  was  slaking  of  the 
soul,  was  illumination.  If,  after  progression 
of  dull  years,  your  pale  maturity  could  answer 
with  a  tithe  of  that  old  marvelling  delight,  it 
seemed  proof  absolute  that  the  cause  of  the 
new  wonder  must  be  also  great.  And  it 
seemed  sad  fate  that  a  mere  hazard  determ- 
ined our  entry  into  the  place  of  learning.  In 
this  university,  teaching  things  of  the  dawn, 
none  might  matriculate  but  by  incurring  first 
hurt  or  disease.  It  was  a  perversity  that  to 
graduate  and  pass  out  with  honours,  you 
must  come  in  disabled  less  or  more,  with 
health  impaired,  limbs  unsound,  or  mind  un- 
settled, and,  to  crown  all,  delivered  like  a 
bale  or  carcass,  the  arbiter  of  your  arrival, 
Chance. 


XVII 

PAIN  is  a  great  teacher  in  his  own 
house,  though  few  of  those  who  lie 
under  him  will  at  first  have  it  so,  since 
the  mind  must  be  weaned  to  his  dismaying 
method.  They  are  for  long  space  in  no  mood 
to  take  his  usage  as  fair  pedagogics;  rather  is 
it  applied  ferocity;  they  seem  less  taught  than 
set  upon.  To  men  dazed  and  like  hurt  wild 
creatures,  Pain  is  at  the  beginning  but  a  wild- 
er beast.  They  are  themselves  helpless  prey 
for  every  feral  shape  that  fevers  loose  on 
them,  wolf,  tiger,  bear,  vulture  clawing  and 
beaking.  Or  in  the  hours  when  they  are  left 
spent,  as  it  were  mere  substance  of  man  dis- 
persed, brayed  or  molten,  with  one  single 
attribute,  to  suffer  through  each  atom,  he  is 
dire  elemental  force  impelled  through  them, 
now  fast,  now  slow,  now  hot,  now  cold,  con- 
tinuous now,  now  intermitting,  urgent  to 
crush,  to  wrench,  to  drill,  to  burn,  to  freeze; 
never  the  same,  yet  always  perceived  one  na- 
ture, as  it  were  a  serial  fierceness.    Not  until 

l66 


Domu0  Doloris  167 

some  strength  is  regathered  to  them,  and 
selfhood  stirs  to  a  resistance,  does  Pain  be- 
come personal  as  themselves,  their  own  an- 
tagonist. Yet  still  he  remains  power  of 
cruelty,  and  worse  now,  as  a  hard  calculator 
set  over  them,  a  president  of  their  small  fates, 
passionlessly  hurting  by  some  superhuman 
law.  For  he  will  seem  to  pause  at  his  leisure 
that  he  may  lay  bare  all  fibres,  or  spin  out 
immeasurable  suspense,  till  life  aches  under 
his  touch  through  all  its  moments.  Hours  are 
as  days,  days  as  years,  before  there  is  any 
good  divined  in  him,  or  any  purpose  but  to 
harm. 

To  many,  a  change  of  mind  towards  Pain 
comes  only  when  streng*-h,  flooding  back  from 
ebb,  restores  in  them  the  old  vanity.  A  day 
dawns  when  the  oppressor  seems  not  to  de- 
part, as  of  custom,  at  his  good  pleasure,  but 
to  draw  off,  as  one  discomfited.  It  is  enough 
for  the  complacent  human  nature.  Now 
manling  is  himself  again,  the  revulsionary 
creature  that  would  be  on  the  summit  at  one 
jump  from  the  base.  For  do  but  hearken  to 
that  which  goes  forward  in  this  atomy,  that 
but  now  lay  overborne,  its  ghost  half  given 


1 68  Domu0  Dolon0 

up.  Before  him,  before  his  right  arm,  so 
please  you,  and  his  great  soul,  Og,  King  of 
giants,  flees  over  Jabbok.  Sancta  simpUc'itas, 
how  wonderful  a  thing  is  man !  "The  foe  is 
fled,  he  shall  come  no  more;  here  hang  his 
trophies."  O  sanctior,  O  sanctissima!  But 
Pain  has  a  short  way  with  all  this  simpleness. 
The  boast  yet  on  his  lips,  homunculus  is  down 
again,  more  abject,  under  a  hand  that  might 
pinch  him  up  like  dust.  He  lies  under  the 
great  hand,  sad  enough  for  his  haste  to  vaunt, 
and  in  so  far  touched  by  grace.  And  hence- 
forward his  education  goes  more  by  an  in- 
ward way;  the  body  is  still  tried,  but  the  heart 
and  sense  are  also  wrought  upon.  First  he 
perceives  himself  arch-fool,  being  but  a  pinch 
of  life,  to  have  provoked  so  masterful  a 
handler;  and  next  it  is  borne  in  to  him  that 
this  adversary,  who  might  have  ended  him  but 
did  not,  was  more  than  brute,  or  heavy  king 
in  Bashan.  For  having  vanquished,  he  took 
no  manner  of  advantage,  but  went  quietly 
away;  and  after  many  days  came  again,  and 
with  great  patience  taught  how  he  should 
have  been  opposed,  and  how,  not  forgetting 
due  homuncular  proportion,  manling  should 


2Domu0  Doloris  169 

yet  learn  to  strive  with  him,  and  in  time  get 
stouter  thews.  Now  follow  bouts  which  end 
not  with  abasement  but  with  exalting;  till 
manling  (if  English  of  the  elder  fashion,  and 
thinking  biblically  in  stress)  recalls  a  wres- 
tling once  begun  between  a  frailty  and  an  om- 
nipotence which  strove  not  to  destroy  but  to 
render  wise. 

At  this  stage  Pain  is  wont  to  grant  a 
breathing-space  to  the  tired  small  creature, 
that  he  may  take  bearing  of  his  road  and 
have  glimpse  whither  it  may  lead.  Now  first, 
the  forest  somehow  threaded,  light  peers  in 
under  low  boughs.  Into  that  light  the  path 
of  chastening  may  lead  the  endurer  out,  over 
rich  vales,  up  slopes  towards  lit  clouds.  To 
the  cloud-border  only  the  strong  go;  many 
may  reach  the  wood's  edge  and  look  forward. 
In  the  heart  of  the  wood  none  knew  how  far 
he  should  attain;  light  restores  prospect. 
There  comes  with  it  a  happy  sense  of  life 
promoted  and  raised  higher,  such  as  a  child 
feels,  granted  privilege  of  the  upgrown.  Your 
patient  has  already  joy  of  great  association; 
a  spirit  has  descended,  by  whose  touch  life 
is  braver.      For  Pain   is   now  perceived   a 


170  Domu0  Dolon0 

spirit,  and  the  encounter  spiritual;  the  hard- 
est fighting  fell  to  the  soul.  The  hour  when 
these  things  grow  clear  is  gracious;  life  seems 
to  move  through  it  from  Nature's  order  into 
the  order  of  Grace. 

In  such  interlude  it  had  been  conveyed  to 
you  that  the  limit  of  your  learning  was 
reached,  and  you  should  go  no  further; 
whence  at  first  a  childish  jubilance  and  recoil 
into  fleshly  ease.  But  second  thoughts  bade 
you  soon  question  the  gain.  You  had  dis- 
covered how  infinite  in  this  place  might  be 
the  loss  from  abridgment  of  experience  or 
forfeit  of  a  single  lesson;  discharge  now, 
with  the  best  all  unattained,  began  to  have 
more  and  more  colour  of  misadventure.  It 
seemed  to  follow,  from  the  light  usage  meted 
out,  that  you  were  not  of  those  chosen  to  ex- 
cel, but  set  down  unworthy  of  the  supreme 
discipline;  this  spoiled  all  your  ease.  The 
deeper  you  saw  into  the  event,  the  surer  it 
became  that  you  had  missed  election.  Your 
inheritance  was  taken;  in  your  helplessness 
there  had  been  fed  to  you  a  pottage  for  which, 
consciously,  you  had  never  asked.  It  was  a 
bitter  time;  the  body  now  had  enough,  but 


Domu0  Doloris!  171 

the  spirit  hungered.  While  the  sense  of  dis- 
illusion remained  quick,  you  sought  to  be  per- 
suaded that  though  you  had  failed  of  the 
great  prize  you  had  yet  some  profit  of  this 
schooling.  There  was  a  pleasure  in  going 
over  the  few  things  you  had  been  suffered  to 
learn;  they  were  mere  gleanings,  yet  they 
should  make  grist. 

You  had  learned  first  that  endurance  is 
less  according  to  strength  of  body  than  to 
valiance  of  spirit.  For  as  physical  perfec- 
tion or  defect  invigorates  or  impedes  the  soul 
in  its  endeavour,  so  the  spirit  of  the  mind  af- 
fects the  body;  a  brave  soul  will  keep  it  silent 
in  red  flame,  a  mean  one  will  let  it  cry  out  at 
a  singeing.  And  as  endurance  is  according 
to  the  spirit,  so  is  pain  conditional  to  endur- 
ance. For  when  the  brave  spirit  puts  forth 
all  its  strength.  Pain  yields;  when  there  is 
flinching,  he  will  press  fiercely.  You  well  ap- 
proved it  now  that  surgeon  and  nurse  are 
slow  to  say  what  pain  is  borne  by  this  patient 
or  by  that,  cautious  to  the  extreme  point  of 
doubt.  They  pause,  suspending  judgment, 
even  in  presence  of  an  open  nature.  And 
when  a  close  heart  is  before  them,  they  will 


172  Domus  Doloris 

not  even  conjecture ;  for  it  is  true  in  suffering, 
as  in  all  affections  else,  that  a  closed  heart  is 
of  an  undiscernible  and  deep  secrecy: 

non  chiaro  si  vede 
Un  chiuso  cor  in  siio  alto  secrete. 

In  such  case,  how  should  they  tell  what  re- 
inforcement is  held  back,  to  be  thrown  for- 
ward suddenly  into  the  midmost,  changing 
the  whole  face  of  battle?  In  the  astounding 
hour  they  have  seen  such  changes  wrought, 
and  by  those  who,  to  outward  seeming,  had 
no  longer  fuel  in  them  for  one  flicker  of 
the  soul.  They  have  been  witness  to  victories 
past  all  imagining,  and  to  like  defeats;  having 
in  their  day  learned  prudence,  they  hold  their 
peace.  Before  they  may  decide  what  is 
borne,  they  will  somewhat  know  that  which 
bears,  a  knowledge  which  neither  a  face  nor 
a  demeanour  will  infallibly  yield  even  to 
trained  eyes.  The  issue  is  with  that  which 
hovers  out  of  sight,  beyond  the  excruciated 
flesh,  their  thumbed  primer.  In  two  bodie; 
of  like  health  and  strength,  equal  wounds  will 
not  cause  equal  pain,  for  the  one  may  har- 
bour a  great  heart  and  the  other  a  small,  and 


iDomu0  Doloris  173 

pain  frames  itself  to  the  heart's  measure. 
Antinous  in  his  gainliness  shall  do  sorrily  be- 
side a  starveling  of  a  man,  a  forked  radish. 
Here  are  diversities  not  scrutable  by  rule  or 
method.  For  to  inference  from  studied  symp- 
toms there  must  be  added  a  spiritual  diag- 
nosis, which  in  perfection  comes  only  to  a  few, 
by  the  way  of  genius.  Healers  who  command 
that  power  will  compare  the  sufferings  of 
different  patients  only  if  they  have  knowl- 
edge of  the  course  run  by  each,  and  if  it 
may  be,  of  ancestral  lives.  Something  the 
surgeon  and  nurse  would  therefore  know  of 
the  manner  in  which  each  has  used  the  in- 
heritance of  life,  and,  above  all,  how  borne 
prosperities;  they  would  divine  the  nurture 
of  the  will  set  up  by  each  within  himself.  In 
a  word,  they  would  know  the  character  im- 
pressed on  the  inward  substance,  of  which  the 
outer  is  often  but  a  case  misfitted,  or  a  mas- 
quer's skilfully  composed  disguise. 

The  best  of  them,  perhaps,  would  first  ad- 
mit that  in  this  riddle  of  suffering  the  patient 
is  expert  and  they  themselves  of  a  lay  igno- 
rance. Their  tricks  to  avert  or  conquer  pain 
give  them  no  pride;  their  immissions  into  the 


174  Domu$  Doloris 

blood,  their  fumes  drowsing  the  brain,  lend 
far  too  short  a  power;  they  feel  themselves 
shadowy  and  weak  helpers,  sprinkling  scant 
drops  from  Lethe;  the  lasting  help  and 
anodyne  is  unadministrable  by  their  hands. 
That  must  rise  from  a  wellspring  far  within; 
and  whether  it  shall  succeed  or  fail,  rests  not 
with  them  or  with  their  wisdom,  but  with  the 
bruised  remainder  of  an  incarnation  which 
lies  and  gives  no  sign.  Innumerable  times  our 
perverse  human  nature  must  thwart  their 
practice.  For  on  one  day,  as  they  consider 
the  battered  sheath  of  a  man  in  which  the 
good  steel  seems  broken  and  rusted  half 
away,  there  is  drawn  from  it  a  sword  of  the 
spirit  fit  for  St.  Michael;  and  on  another  day, 
in  a  great  scabbard  lightly  dinted  there  is 
found  a  blade  of  lath.  As  you  revolved  these 
things,  this  matter  of  the  soul's  encasement 
seemed  well  nigh  impenetrable  even  to  aided 
sight;  wisdom  had  no  rays  to  determine  the 
spirit  in  the  clay;  here  there  was  no  science, 
but  an  haruspication.  You  wondered  if  the 
sense  of  impotence  in  such  things  bred  melan- 
choly in  wise  men  and  women,  thrown  back 
thus  upon  layman's  insight,  which  is  rather  of 


Domu0  Doloris  175 

humanity  than  science;  or  whether  they  were 
consoled  by  the  humour  of  their  state  as 
seers,  oracular  in  repute,  but  in  truth  loose 
diviners.  You  fancied  them  in  their  con- 
fabulations amused  together  like  Roman 
augurs,  with  meaning  smiles  exchanged, 
shrugging  their  shoulders  often  over  blank 
lots  drawn  by  the  great  masters,  or  over  rare 
triumph  of  a  guess,  in  the  nick  of  time  saving 
their  credit.  For  the  affair  was  between 
manling  and  Pain,  neither  surgeon,  nor  doc- 
tor, nor  nurse  having  in  last  resort  any  say, 
but  these  two  deciding  by  themselves,  apart. 
For  these  two  it  was  who  drew  the  cord  tense ; 
they  knew  for  what  strain  it  were  fit;  none 
other  knew  but  they.  And  all  the  reward  of 
such  trial  should  seem  likewise  the  patient's 
due,  the  sense  of  achieved  masterdom  and 
control  which  is  glorious  in  the  heart  of  man. 
For  the  surmounter  of  many  towering  waves 
swims  all  aglow  towards  new  storms;  and  if 
great  stubborn  odds  turn  hardly  at  the  elev- 
enth hour  and  wane  from  him,  his  own 
strength  lasting  well,  he  has  something  as 
near  ecstasy  as  nature  in  her  extreme  trial 
may  attain.    To  live  out  those  moments  when 


176  Domus!  Dolorjg 

the  balance  trembles  upon  the  turn,  is  to  feel 
manhood  sweet,  and  to  have  crowned  prime 
of  days. 

The  faith  that  such  victories  might  indeed 
be  won,  confirmed  belief,  that  Pain  is  not 
infinite  but  has  his  set  end,  attainable  by  the 
humblest  among  the  steadfast.  There  had 
been  an  hour  when  you  dreamed  that  your- 
self by  immense  effort  might  just  have 
touched  it,  before  a  swerving  force  bore  you 
away,  never  to  approach  again.  But  now  this 
great  Term  of  Pain  stood  vague  for  you 
and  remote,  as  ideals  are  wont  to  stand,  in  a 
luminous  mist,  unapprehended.  Immunity 
might  spare  your  flesh;  but  here  was  a  poor 
exchange:  ease  of  a  few  nerves  for  the  lost 
chance  of  chances.  Your  heart  was  sore  after 
the  thing  denied;  there  was  a  wound  in  the 
rejection.  For  this  might  well  be  irretriev- 
able loss,  such  great  occasions  not  often  re- 
turning, or  coming  in  years  weaker  in  re- 
sistance, when  there  is  profit  in  them  for 
effectual  life  no  more.  Your  pilgrimage  of 
pain  was  untimely  abandoned ;  and  at  first  you 
had  exulted.     Only  when  the  other  pilgrims 


Domu$  Dolon0  177 

went  on  and  left  you,  did  you  perceive  them 
bound,  not  for  any  wayside  shrine,  but  for  an 
august  place  and  earth's  navel;  you  had 
missed  a  Mecca  or  a  Rome. 

It  was  vain  now  to  expect  full  knowledge. 
To  the  Term  each  must  go  himself,  feeling 
with  his  proper  senses,  looking  with  his  own 
eyes;  this  pilgrimage  is  not  by  proxy. 
You  were  to  find  that  those  who  re- 
turn have  rarely  made  their  vision  real  to 
others,  either  because  the  power  failed  them, 
or  the  will.  They  who  would  tell  most  ad- 
ventures of  life  will  be  silent  over  this,  wheth- 
er it  is  that  some  awe  clings  about  the  mem- 
ory, or  that  an  excluding  pride  of  initiates 
holds  them,  or  again,  that  they  have  the  mod- 
esty of  the  valiant,  and  inbred  hate  of  words. 
The  explorers  of  the  last,  the  limitary  men, 
are  not  at  pains  to  recount;  for  them  talk  is 
waste  sound,  there  is  a  seemliness  in  silence. 
In  these  dire  days  the  land  was  full  of  the 
supreme  endurers;  they  had  suffered  woes  un- 
dreamed by  the  famed  Ithacan,  who  dis- 
coursed too  much  ever  to  have  borne  as  they. 
You  were  to  learn  that  those  with  the  rich- 
est hidden  treasure  were  for  the  most  part 


178  Domus  Dolon0 

good  guards  of  it;  but  for  your  own  defeat, 
it  had  been  a  joy  to  see  them  avert  the  ques- 
tions which,  inwardly,  you  were  half  shamed 
to  put.  The  young  Peirithous  did  not  remem- 
ber, when  you  asked,  what  things  he  under- 
went and  beyond  hope  surmounted,  offering 
for  young  Theseus  the  life  which  the  Fates 
refused.  And  you  must  honour  the  forget- 
fulness,  praising  him  in  your  heart  that  he  did 
not  bring  out  sanctities  to  do  you  pleasure. 
You  came  to  know  at  last  that  from  these  and 
all  their  kind  you  might  look  for  no  clear 
light;  only  a  gleam  left  in  their  eyes  from 
something  vanished  would  flash  you  now  and 
then  pale  suggestion.  But  if  from  this  side 
was  little  hope  of  knowledge,  then  from  none. 
You  were  left  with  the  glimpses  which  had 
shone  for  you  at  the  furthest  point  of  your 
short  advance,  visions  under  the  dark  boughs, 
and  much  too  far  away.  Yet  if  near  experi- 
ence might  not  be,  the  faith  at  least  was  worth 
the  getting,  that  Pain  cedes  to  the  stout  heart, 
that  he  stays  upon  a  bourne  or  verge  not 
touched  alone,  but  leisurely  frequented  by 
the  dauntless,  who  walk  there  unovercome. 
It  was  a  good  faith,   and  comfortable  for 


Domusi  Dolotis!  179 

manlings.  To  have  learned  of  Pain  in  his 
own  house,  though  it  were  but  as  a  speller- 
out  of  rudiments,  was  great  event  in  a  life  un- 
accidented  heretofore,  and,  in  the  words  of 
one  who  learned  all  his  days,  not  put  in  the 
way  of  extraordinary  casualties. 


XVIII 

As  time  passed,  there  dally  increased  in 
you  desire  to  praise  the  high  discipline 
of  healing  and  tending;  long  might  it 
live,  long  flourish.  Praise  to  it  and  to  all 
orders  and  powers  of  helpfulness  allied  with 
it;  and  such  increase,  that  where  now  they 
stood  defensive  in  the  gate,  they  might  here- 
after more  and  more  prevent  the  invader, 
fighting  for  the  Whole  beyond  the  walls.  Of 
all  that  fair  alliance  it  seemed  to  have  natural 
priority  and  advantage,  since  it  wrought  al- 
ways about  the  very  roots  of  humanity,  so 
learning  incomparably  well  out  of  what 
ground  and  by  what  husbandry  we  flourish. 
Calm  science,  watching  over  it,  taught  it  dis- 
passionate care.  It  neither  favoured  nor  pre- 
judged; nothing  weighed  with  it  but  deliver- 
ance by  the  honest  use  of  truth.  No  lure  of 
false  emotion  turned  it  aside  or  diffused  its 
central  force,  but  it  went  discerning  things  in 
their  nature,  and  following  their  discovered 
law.  Its  host  had  the  coherence  of  an  army, 
1 80 


Domuib  Dolotis  iSi 

but  was  embodied  against  evils  only;  It  did 
not  take  the  field  in  a  bad  cause.  It  had  the 
constancy  of  a  Church,  but  no  doctrine  tempt- 
ed it  at  any  time  to  disdain  flesh  and  blood. 
And  there  had  been  given  to  it  opportunity  to 
quicken  and  enlarge  service,  denied  by  Na- 
ture to  an  army  and  by  institution  to  a 
Church.  It  drew  Its  servants  not  from  a 
part  of  human-kind,  but  from  the  whole;  it 
did  not  shut  from  Its  work  the  half  of  the 
human  race.  It  brought  the  priestess  Into  Its 
temple,  the  Amazon  Into  its  war. 

Therefore  this  discipline  was  of  the  future. 
It  was  anticipatory,  it  challenged  time,  not  by 
its  forward  sight  alone,  not  only  by  its  high 
collective  aim,  nor  by  the  capacity  of  its  spirit 
to  pass  over  Into  other  fields,  but  also  by  the 
firm  balance  of  heart  and  mind  which  It  com- 
pelled. In  the  past  there  had  been  no  suffi- 
cient thought  of  such  poise  In  the  common 
life;  moreover,  the  two  sexes  within  them- 
selves had  failed  of  it,  each,  as  It  were,  list- 
ing to  a  side,  a  little  through  its  own  pro- 
pensity, but  more  through  an  unnatural  sever- 
ance of  main  life-interests,  imparting  a  false 


i82  Domu0  Doloti0 

bias.  There  was  no  general  understanding 
or  control :  the  male  was  let  verge  unchecked 
to  dry  cults  of  reason,  the  female  to  emo- 
tional excess.  Whence,  as  extremes,  there 
walked  abominable  before  us  the  mindlessly- 
cordial  woman,  the  heartlessly  mental  man; 
as  means,  a  host  of  slant  and  ill-balanced 
natures,  secured  in  any  gait  to  which  they  in- 
clined under  the  bad  law  of  letting  be. 
The  future  should  enforce  a  saner  principle 
for  the  demeanour  of  the  whole  kind;  as  pre- 
liminary to  such  new  order,  this  discipline 
seemed  greatly  to  forerun.  There  was  set  up 
under  it  a  constitution  for  all  who  laboured 
in  its  precincts;  the  heart  was  enthroned,  but 
the  reason  named  executive  minister,  without 
whose  counsel  in  matters  of  community  the 
crown  might  never  act.  In  all  hours  of  its 
service  this  constitution  was  obeyed;  beyond 
them,  the  great  human  charities  reclaimed  al- 
legiance. There  were  many  to  urge  that  by 
such  control  personality  suffered  loss,  above 
all  in  amenity  and  sweetness.  But  the  loss 
was  less  real  than  fancied,  and  not  compar- 
able to  the  gain  on  other  sides;  and  posterity 
might  not  judge  amenity  in  our  manner.     It 


Domu0  Dolorig  183 

was  objected  to  the  women  of  this  service 
that  they  stripped  themselves  too  bare  of 
tenderness;  the  critics  most  ready  with  this 
charge  were  for  the  most  part  themselves 
women.  But  the  answer  came  from  those 
best  qualified  to  judge,  from  the  sick  and 
harmed  in  the  hospitals,  who  declared  they 
found  these  hearts  in  the  right  places  still, 
and  with  enough  gentleness  for  their  need. 
And  the  most  just  of  the  objectors,  those  who 
did  not  clamour  from  beyond  the  gates,  but 
came  in  and  shared  this  life  themselves, 
learned  also  to  understand,  and  often  in  the 
end  honourably  recanted.  Called  to  aid  dur- 
ing the  early  stress  of  war,  they  confessed  that 
at  first  there  were  times  when  they  stood  dis- 
mayed at  a  sisterhood  inhumanly  impassive 
before  things  which  it  was  agony  to  see.  The 
Minerva-like  serenity  on  these  brows  af- 
fronted their  pride  in  a  sex  responsive  above 
all  to  suffering;  they  were  startled  and  es- 
tranged. But  once  participants,  they  dis- 
covered plain  necessities,  and  chief  among 
them  this  serene  calm.  They  quickly  learned 
that  upon  this  not  least  victory  hung;  that  a 
hospital  was  indeed  a  ship  of  war,  where  in 


1 84  Domug  Dolotis 

time  of  action  the  battle-quarters  of  the  feel- 
ings are  below.  They  found  that  here  the 
heart  was  not  dead;  it  was  battened  down 
when  the  drum  beat  to  quarters.  In  a  few 
months  they  vexed  themselves  no  more  over 
Minerva's  pulse;  they  battened  their  own 
hearts  down.  They  now  knew  the  blindness 
theirs,  not  forthwith  to  have  seen  that  in  this 
profession  no  emotion  must  cross  a  duty. 
The  work  was  like  a  game  of  skill,  needing 
the  quick  eye  and  sure  hand.  She  whom  feel- 
ings overcame  helped  not  the  sick  but  the  sick- 
ness; she  carried  two  loads  in  place  of  one; 
the  odds  were,  she  should  fall.  None  knew  it 
better  than  the  sick  themselves,  whether  of 
the  self-pitying  kind,  or  of  the  selfless;  with 
one  voice  they  prayed  for  a  calm  strength 
about  them,  and  to  be  delivered  from  your 
aspen  tenderness.  Emotion  manifested  was 
pure  mischief,  harming  them  all.  For  the 
first  kind  were  distressed  to  cause  distress, 
and  insensibly  took  hurt  in  their  finer  consti- 
tution. The  second  discovered  in  a  care  too 
visibly  displayed  a  menace  for  their  dear 
selves;  and  since  their  souls  were  already 
poured  out  as  water,  they  would  have  about 


Domu0  Dolorig  185 

them  nothing  dissoluble  more,  but  rather  a 
solidity  upon  which  they  might  be  stayed.  In 
short,  the  patientry  were  of  one  mind  that 
softness  must  never  impede  skill.  Euripides 
utters  their  thought  for  them  when  he  says 
that  between  the  tender  and  the  tended  there 
must  be  no  feelings  which  touch  the  life's 
marrow,  but  likings  of  a  detachable  kind 
alone,  such  as  may  be  drawn  in  or  loosed 
without  immoderate  joy  or  pain.  For  other- 
wise the  strength  of  the  tender  will  give  way 
when  the  strain  is  full : 

Over  hard  the  burden,  if  one  soul  must 
hear  the  pain  for  two. 

It  should  appeal  to  all  of  them  alike  that  the 
words  are  set  in  the  mouth  of  a  Greek  nurse, 
pointing  the  moral  in  her  own  person,  one  in- 
effectual with  her  case  because,  for  pity  of  it, 
she  let  her  own  heart  bleed. 

This  service  with  its  humanity  and  its  hold 
on  coming  time  needed  no  common  praise. 
For  such  high  exemplar,  the  commendation 
must  be  lofty  and  sustained;  for  a  valiance 
fighting  out  on  all  sides  towards  the  future 
there  must  be  praise  of  large  embrace.  This 
was  a  power  of  the  new  age,  radiant  of  a 


1 86  Domus  Dolon0 

light  destined  to  flow  beyond  present  bounds 
and  prepare  world-wide  healing,  for  the 
common  health  was  not  freedom  from  chill 
or  fever,  but  the  expansion  of  all  faculties  in 
a  harmony  of  clean  life.  If  the  light  was 
now  too  much  prisoned  in  narrow  places,  if 
they  whose  final  destiny  it  was  to  serve  health 
alone  must  toil  to  cure  preventable  ills,  the 
blame  lay  not  with  them,  but  with  us  all, 
with  the  careless,  blind  communities,  rulers 
and  governed,  whose  duty  it  was  to  root  out 
causes  of  disease  from  our  estate,  whose 
practice  it  was  to  let  them  be.  It  was  high 
merit  that  those  whose  true  career  we  spoiled 
had  any  pity  on  us,  and  wrought  their  best 
for  us  in  this  adversity,  waiting  the  day  of 
justice.  For  such  desert  there  must  be  noth- 
ing short  of  panegyric,  the  praise  that  the 
whole  people  hears.  And  since  It  should 
be  a  praise  sung  clear  and  echoing,  some 
lord  of  music  should  begin  it,  one  who 
should  have  known  the  house  of  pain, 
and  himself  lying  In  the  wards,  have 
heard  in  the  time  of  his  own  suffering 
the  deep  note  haunting  there,  unseizable 
of  the   common   ear,   but   of  his   haply  to 


Domu0  Dolotig  187 

be  captured.  For  if,  as  they  say,  the  con- 
tent of  a  great  music  may  gather  to  one  note, 
enlarged  about  it  into  a  theme  or  heard  sem- 
blance, and  growing  out  again  from  that  first 
growth  to  infinite  expansion,  what  noble  des- 
cant should  not  he  make  upon  such  a 
ground  or  base,  fetched  from  the  borderland 
of  life  and  death,  where  often,  in  your  fancy, 
sounds  from  the  timeless  stray  over  into  the 
solitudes  of  time? 

The  great  service  was  honourably  imper- 
fect; it  had  its  known  flaws  which,  of  its  hon- 
esty, it  would  amend  rather  than  hide.  It 
was  too  near  to  our  humanity  not  to  draw 
some  taint  from  us.  Though  the  light  of  the 
morning  gleamed  for  it,  ancient  shadows  yet 
lingered  under  its  roof-eaves  or  in  the  angles 
of  its  courts.  Some  of  its  new  wine  was  in  old 
skins  patched  and  leaking.  Its  common  life 
might  not  everywhere  attain  to  the  unbroken 
harmony:  there  were  discords,  clangours, 
snappings  of  tense  strings.  You  might 
not  doubt  that  among  its  representatives 
there  were  some  to  compromise  its  name. 
It  might  be  surmised  that  sometimes  it 
must   bear    with   masters    of   its    arts   who 


1 88  Domus  DoIotiiB! 

did  not  know  the  art  of  living,  with 
rough-minded  men,  with  fanatical,  with  ab- 
surd. Rumour  told  that  there  might  still  here 
and  there  be  found  a  Diafoirus  esteemed  for 
jargon,  or  a  dunce  fee'd  for  an  urbane  air; 
and  that  many  were  the  reputations  magni- 
fied by  mere  pavonian  strut  and  spread.  It 
must  needs  yet  be  harmed  by  damaging  parti- 
sans, the  hot  enthusiast,  the  chill  bigot  of 
routine.  It  might  not  always  escape  scandal; 
in  its  great  garden,  as  in  every  other  place  of 
ordered  growth,  were  still  found  strange 
roots  of  bitterness,  ill  company  for  sweet- 
flowering  souls: 

Amongst  the  roses  grew  some  wicked  weeds. 
But  were  there  in  very  truth  all  these  dis- 
creditors;  lurked  there  indeed  among  its 
thousands  the  zealot  of  the  knife  grudging 
habeas  corpus,  the  matron  tyrannesse,  the 
Sister  stiff  over  precedence,  a  mind  drawn  like 
a  Bill  of  Rights ;  moved  there  amid  the  throng 
of  nurses  more  types  of  foolishness  than 
Plautus  might  find  names  for,  the  passively 
unspiritual  of  this  spirit,  the  hirelings  at 
heart,  wage-takers,  doers  of  the  least;  stirred 
there  in  this  multitude  the  mischievous  in  of- 


Domus  Dolon0  189 

fence,  backbiters,  tarnishers  of  hope,  mock- 
ers, hate-f omenters ;  pattered  there  along  the 
wards  the  unwinged  feet  of  those  not  born  for 
this  nobility,  the  posturing,  the  hare-brained, 
the  pragmatic,  the  narrow,  the  obstinate,  the 
deciduous  of  will — all  manner  of  misem- 
ployed and  undevoted  virgins;  were  there  at 
this  very  hour  throughout  the  wide  jurisdic- 
tion this  whole  delinquency  presented — were 
it  even  so,  what  then?  Why,  no  such  dread- 
ful matter,  or  the  sense  of  proportion  is 
dead  within  us.  None  knowing  from  with- 
in the  house  of  pain  and  the  quality  of  its 
people  should  feel  his  loyalty  disturbed  by  all 
the  bead-roll  of  follies  and  defects.  For  it 
is  plain  to  him  that  even  in  the  gross  and 
average  this  people  is  of  the  great  kind. 
Against  one  surgeon  seemingly  turned  Cree 
for  science,  he  shall  put  scores  of  incisive 
but  kind  men;  against  one  vainly  garrulous 
physician,  hundreds  who  act  before  they  talk 
and  do  both  well;  against  the  tyrannesse  is- 
suing from  her  antre,  the  lady  of  the  lamp; 
against  the  percher  on  a  dignity,  the  great 
family  of  Sisters  who  stand  upon  nothing 
but  a  true  service ;  against  the  deciduous,  all 


190  Domus  Dolotis 

those  whose  leaf  was  always  green  and  in 
memory  is  imaginable  only  so. 

The  larger  praise  therefore  should  stand, 
not  lessened  by  these  things,  but  rather  quick- 
ened at  thought  of  the  great  maze  of  stum- 
bling-blocks and  snares  through  which  thishost 
miraculously  passed  in  order.  Guilt  of  an  old 
injustice  recoiled  upon  ourselves,  who  feared 
the  people  of  the  house  of  pain,  hurrying  past 
averse  because  they  and  their  work  waked  in 
us  images  of  dread  things :  it  was  the  coward- 
liness of  an  age  too  soft  with  comfort  to 
endure  truth.  At  sight  of  them  we  thought 
too  easily  of  man  as  grass  that  the  scythe 
mows  down  in  the  green.  We  summoned  up 
too  well  their  forerunners  of  frightful  mem- 
ory, those  old  sawyers,  cuppers,  drenchers, 
and  Megzeras  of  foetid  wards,  who  still  out 
of  their  graves  harmed  their  profession.  We 
could  not  forget  the  time  when  it  might  be 
soberly  maintained  that  the  hospital  slew 
more  than  the  disease.  Though  the  chil- 
dren of  a  new  day  had  clean  issued  from  this 
past,  our  timorous  eyes  yet  saw  its  shreds 
upon  them.  But  it  was  in  truth  to  ourselves 
that  the  past  clung,  the  past  of  primitive 


Domus;  Dolotis  191 

man.  They  had  been  seen  by  us  as  forms 
of  evil  omen  upon  our  path;  did  they  bid 
good-day,  it  was  almost  memento  mori.  So 
reasons  the  savage;  ours  were  primaeval 
superstitions,  aboriginal  thoughts.  Deep  in 
our  consciousness  we  believed  that  they  had 
knowledge  abstruse  from  us,  powerful  to  mar 
our  days.  Confusions  old  as  man's  mind, 
made  out  of  them  wielders  of  magic.  They 
could  noose  our  very  souls  in  snares;  they 
had  us  at  the  utter  disadvantage,  helpless  as 
penned  herds.  The  surgeon  was  medicine- 
man, an  unscrupling  practiser;  the  nurse, 
witch-woman,  Circe  of  the  many  simples, 
changing  us  to  dumb  beasts.  A  wilful  igno- 
rance kept  up  backward,  men  in  an  age  of 
Stone.  These  pitiful  and  small  causes  work- 
ing together  to  estrange,  insensibly  had  ef- 
fect. Larger  and  worse  was  the  contented 
blindness  by  which  we  were  not  aware  that 
we  misperceived.  Argo  was  launched  for  us; 
we  saw  Charon's  boat. 


XIX 

THAT  larger  praise  of  the  panegyric 
should  come  when  the  right  encomiast, 
hurt  to  the  right  point  for  under- 
standing, should  be  brought  in  under  the  kind 
star.  Your  lesser  business  was  to  praise  what 
yourself  had  seen.  It  might  be  objected  that 
you  looked  from  too  fixed  a  point,  as  one  who 
should  describe  a  village  from  the  stocks,  with 
its  main  life  passed  behind  his  back.  It  were 
more  just  to  say  you  were  as  one  lying  dead- 
still  on  the  watch  in  a  glade  full  of  birds. 
Such  naturalist  has  no  need  to  quest  after 
knowledge ;  if  he  is  well  posted,  it  comes  to 
him,  and  on  wings.  His  very  fixity  is  his 
gain  over  the  impatient  searcher  whose  foot- 
step scares  before  he  comes  to  near  vision. 
You  were  posted  well  enough  upon  ground 
well  chosen,  and  by  force  of  things  made 
patient.  You  stayed  so  motionless  and  so 
long,  that  the  life  of  the  place  went  un- 
constrained about  you,  as  if  you  were  not 
there;  and  a  chirp  or  flutter  out  of  sight  at 
192 


Domu0  Dolon0  193 

last  told  experience  more  than  ignorance 
in  the  beginning  learned  from  full  view. 
And  having  in  truth  not  birds  to  watch,  crea- 
tures apart  from  us,  but  beings  of  like  kind 
and  reactive  to  idea,  you  served  by  your  mere 
presence  and  the  challenge  of  perceived  sym- 
pathy to  wake  a  responsiveness  in  their  life, 
quietly  deepening  and  quickening  its  expres- 
sion. There  arose  thus  a  still  confluence  of 
minds  Interacting;  imperceptibly  you  elicited, 
and  from  remoter  fields  of  evidence  as  the 
range  of  sympathy  increased.  The  patient, 
observing  in  this  manner.  Is  indeed  mis- 
named; he  Is  agent  above  all,  a  fetcher  forth 
and  a  provoker.  Are  his  means  of  action 
slight?  They  are  in  proportion  subtle,  work- 
ing insensibly  and  unresisted.  The  helpless 
In  truth  exert  a  power,  and  aid  the  helpful; 
evertuating  themselves,  they  draw  out  vir- 
tues. In  this  way  they  come  in  the  end  to 
feel  an  ownership  in  the  qualities  which 
they  would  praise.  They  themselves  have 
aroused,  enhanced,  diversified;  who  then 
should  certify  so  well  as  they?  Your  pa- 
tientry  was  ever  adept  in  these  elicitations. 
The  tests  which  it  applies  must  stand:  Its 


194  Domu0  Doloci0 

knowledge  is  real,  and  won  from  the  quick. 
Often  exacting  and  perverse,  it  tries  each 
side  of  character;  it  provokes  the  souls  of 
those  who  tend  it  by  a  child-like  malice  and 
naughtiness  of  spirit;  if  they  are  approved 
in  its  final  judgment,  be  sure  they  have  ex- 
celled. For  it  knows  that  to  succeed  against 
its  pillow-arts  and  bed-rail  sophistries,  they 
must  have  qualities  no  less  diverse  to  match 
and  thwart  them;  tenderness  and  long- 
suffering  alone  shall  little  avail.  They 
must  have  something  of  the  diplomat  and 
of  the  soldier,  of  the  judge,  the  advocate, 
the  artist;  they  must  have  learned  a  skill 
to  discriminate  and  compare,  to  read  nature, 
to  sum  up  and  decide,  to  persuade  unper- 
ceived  and  quietly  use  dominion.  But  if 
once  they  have  the  upper  hand  of  it,  they  are 
gone  far  to  have  the  measure  of  men,  and  so 
measure  all  things.  For  whoever  shall  thor- 
oughly know  patients  and  yet  calmly  rule 
them,  shall  have  no  bad  key  to  all  humanity; 
from  manling  sick  they  shall  argue  to  manling 
sound,  forearmed  against  his  guile.  The 
patient,  at  his  best  heroic,  in  his  middle  moods 
glides  from  that  height,  sometimes  immeasur- 


Domu0  Doloris  195 

ably  far  down.  Peevish  in  his  discomfort  he 
seeks  for  a  spoiled  self  the  benefit  of  each 
doubt,  in  convalescence  a  wheedler  un- 
abashed, one  who  in  a  moment  screws  up  the 
slack  string  to  the  right  pitch  for  sympathy, 
and  should  cozen  pity  out  of  a  heart  of  stone. 
She  who  can  rule  such  with  an  even  mind, 
preserving  humour  and  the  way  of  gladness, 
shall  proceed  accomplished  citizen  of  any 
larger  world  you  will,  so  difficult  in  this  mi- 
crocosm is  her  life  of  every  day.  And  if  a 
poll  were  taken  of  all  at  a  given  time  lying  in 
the  wards,  up  the  land  and  down,  whether 
success  in  the  hard  task  out-balanced  failure, 
you  felt  very  sure  the  more  part  should  vote 
Aye.  Which  for  you  should  end  the  matter, 
since  from  decision  of  this  ward-mote  there 
might  be  no  appeal. 

It  resulted  that  the  qualities  to  be  praised 
were  various  as  the  planes  and  angles  of 
human  character  turned  ever  and  again 
towards  the  nurse  by  sick  and  restless  minds. 
To  recite  all  were  a  false  step  in  the  prals- 
er,  who  should  thus  dispose  his  audience 
ill,  and  wake  prejudice.  But  since  the  many 
virtues  were  included  in  the  few  greater,  you 


196  Domu0  Dolocis 

would  choose  one   of  this  large  kind,   that 
it  might  stand  out  simply,  and  neither  weary 
nor  offend.    You  would  choose  candour;  and 
the  more  readily,  that  it  was  a  virtue  which 
patients  themselves  help  to  make  by  a  certain 
abhorrent  action  which  they  exert,  ingeminat- 
ing by  their  slyness  the  love  of  all  that  is  most 
contrary,  and  an  abiding  preference  for  truth. 
But  this  singleness  of  mind  had  its  own  great- 
er cause  and  more  constructive,  in  their  daily 
enforced  envisaging  of  those  high  realities 
in  the  light  of  which  souls  grow.    The  neces- 
sity, under  which  they  were,  to  look  straight 
and  to  accord  their  speech  with  sight  lent 
them  an  openness  and  proud  simplicity  which 
seemed  to  draw  into  itself,  like  wide  water, 
all  colour  and  light  of  day.     You  thought  of 
meres  under  the  chalk-downs,  hued  like  no 
others  because  the  underlying  rock  is  white. 
Such  was  their  nature.     And  there  arose  the 
wonder  whether  this  virtue  might  not  spread 
with  the  growth  of  its  cause  in  a  world  en- 
lightened, and  passing  out  into  new  spheres, 
end  the  mental  discommunion  of  two  sexes, 
till  now  incompatibly  disposed  to  knowledge ; 
whether  by  some  new  dignity  of  an  existence 


Domu0  Doloris  197 

better  shared,  it  might  not  antiquate  the 
old  minuet  of  minds  that  set  to  each  other 
in  prescribed  figures  as  partners  in  a  formal 
dance,  but  to  the  last  step  were  strangers; 
whether  there  might  not  spring  in  a  new  soil 
a  new  tree  of  knowledge  with  a  fruit  firm  to 
the  core,  not  fair  only  of  rind  like  the  apple 
of  Lot's  Sea,  of  which  travellers  have  said 
that  though  outwardly  it  may  promise  quench- 
ing of  thirst,  within  it  has  only  silk  and  air, 
or  that  it  is  good  for  two  things  only,  to  stuff 
cushions  and  kindle  fires. 

The  quantitative  problem  solved,  the  quali- 
tative remained,  a  worse  perplexity.  For 
since  here  was  a  service  well  nigh  perfect 
after  its  kind,  the  praise  of  it  must  be  almost 
pure,  a  thing  which  the  world  suspects.  The 
mind  of  man  finds  absolute  praise  too  sweet  a 
manna;  there  must  be  a  touch  of  bitterness, 
or  light  aspersion  into  credit.  So  far  you 
could  go  as  to  admit  those  lesser  froward- 
nesses  by  which  Nature  preserves  from  the 
unbearable  perfection.  It  might  conciliate 
the  suspicious  to  be  assured  that  in  a  pro- 
fession where  success  turns  on  human  qual- 
ities, the  paragon  is  the  general  failure  and 


198  Domu0  Dolorig 

the  first  to  miss  this  praise.  You  could  al- 
low that  these  whom  you  commended  as  free 
from  grave  offence  might  not  be  above 
healthy  outbreaks  of  the  provoked  spirit; 
you  might  guess  that  in  their  private  hours 
they  could  sometimes  forswear  patience, 
fume,  rebel,  and  shake  fists  at  heaven;  and 
you  should  be  glad  it  were  so,  for  who  never 
breaks  out  wins  seldom  through.  But  for 
all  this  you  should  not  abate  a  jot  of  praise, 
since  all  of  it  should  make  more  laudable  yet 
the  long  tenor  of  duty  day  after  day  sus- 
tained. Let  the  admission  that  such  storms 
might  rage  soften  suspicious  minds;  and 
there  should  be  few  so  hard  as  not  to  follow 
in  regard  to  nurses  Dryden's  sentiment 
towards  all  women,  that  he  had  rather  see 
some  of  them  extraordinarily  praised  than 
any  of  them  suffer  detraction.  But  whatever 
suspicion  might  decide,  your  full  praise  should 
be  affirmed,  and  find  enough  credence  by 
the  good  help  of  Chance,  for  there  were 
still  left  in  the  world  a  few  believers  of  the 
fine  credulity,  to  whom  a  praise  at  once  abso- 
lute and  true  is  not  beyond  conception.  And 
Chance,  which  had  introduced  you  to  this 


Domus  Doloris  199 


people  of  the  House  of  Pain,  should  discover 
you  a  sufficient  score  or  two  of  such  hearers, 
to  whom  you  might  pass  on  the  introduction. 
You  vowed  on  your  discharge  to  seek  after 
those  purged  ears.  But  meanwhile  you  were 
determined  to  praise  face  to  face,  most  thank- 
less task  of  all.  Like  all  the  truly  laudable, 
these  might  take  praise  once,  to  please  you, 
but  would  not  bear  it  twice,  though  you  were 
fain  to  give  it  twenty  times,  even  then  their 
hopeless  debtor.  They  were  elusive,  and 
like  wild  creatures;  to  approach  them  you 
must  fetch  many  a  compass,  crawling,  turn- 
ing, going  oblique,  screened  always  from 
open  view,  and  with  success  perhaps  one  day 
in  ten.  It  called  for  a  very  stalker's  skill  to 
catch  them  off  their  guard;  but  there  was  a 
charm  in  the  hard  pursuit,  and  the  practice  of 
this  epaenetic  became  sport.  This  turning 
away  of  theirs  was  no  pretence,  as  at  first,  in 
some  unworthy  moment  of  suspicion,  you 
might  have  deemed;  it  was  a  genuine  aversion 
of  the  whole  nature.  They  who  live  tensely, 
caught  up  in  a  zeal,  have  no  care  of  praise. 
Perhaps  it  is  to  them  a  tinsel,  incongruous 
upon  a  labouring  soul.     Perhaps,  as  having 


200  Domu0  Dolori0 

walked  beside  the  vast  of  trouble  and  meas- 
ured their  smallness  by  it,  they  are  impatient 
of  any  tongue  which  confounds  the  authentic 
scale  of  things.  Or  perhaps  they  are  of  the 
blessed,  who  have  come,  they  know  not  how, 
into  the  great  harmony,  and  are  distressed  by 
flattering  voices;  who  are  not  to  be  praised 
by  articulate  sound,  but  some  hinting  breath 
must  come  to  them  out  of  Nature,  and  a  wind 
in  the  reeds  whisper  to  them  that  they  do 
well. 

It  was  for  these  reasons  that  success  came 
so  hardly,  and  only  when  they  were  taken 
unaware,  as  would  befall  them  at  rare  times. 
So  one  day,  you  took  at  a  disadvantage,  one 
of  the  less  astute,  who  stood  at  first  troubled 
and  at  loss  for  words,  repeating  that  she  and 
her  companions  were  of  the  ordinary,  and  in 
no  wise  singular  in  virtues.  And  soon,  re- 
covering from  the  surprise,  retorted  on  you  a 
charge  of  blindness,  as  being  one  who  could 
not  see  faults  plain  to  all  other  eyes.  But 
you  were  so  elate  over  your  good  hunting 
that  you  let  her  think  to  have  the  better,  con- 
tent to  have  perceived  defect  after  another 
manner,    as   the    irregularity   which    makes 


Domus  Dolon0  201 

the  charm.  It  was  still  almost  a  small  hour 
of  the  morning,  and  the  chance  had  come 
through  your  question  as  to  certain  roarings 
from  a  great  chest  which  during  the  past 
night  had  spoiled  the  general  sleep.  It 
seemed  that  a  giant,  coming  back  with  rever- 
berance  to  consciousness,  had  struggled  like 
Enceladus,  and  that  she  and  another,  to  keep 
him  down,  must  needs  sit  on  his  blankets, 
heaved  up  like  Sicilian  fields.  A  power  to 
cope  at  once  with  the  emergent  or  eruptive 
was  the  first  of  qualifications  for  this  service; 
yet  it  had  seemed  to  you  that  perhaps  there 
might  be  some  slight  touch  of  the  unusual  in 
such  depression  of  a  giant  by  mere  girls,  and 
for  this  cause  you  had  insinuated  your  praise. 
But  here  it  was,  received  less  as  homage  than 
as  a  dust  in  the  eyes,  to  be  rubbed  out  swiftly. 
"We  are  ordinary  girls!"  was  what  she  said; 
and  you  must  conclude  that  at  a  moment's 
call  to  leave  some  task  of  the  light  hand,  thus 
to  bear  down  the  seismic,  and  having  done  it 
to  resume,  was  nowise  removed  from  the 
common  round.  It  impressed,  that  they 
should  understand  it  so.  But  in  a  sense  which 
they  neither  meant  nor  saw,  they  might  in 


202  Domus  2DoIori0 

truth  be  right:  war  might  well  have  proved 
it.  The  quelling  of  emergencies  compared 
with  which  this  sedentary  feat  should  be  as 
nothing  was  usual  to  our  women  serving  on 
the  edge  of  battle,  yet  all  would  make  similar 
reply  about  themselves,  that  they  did  the 
work  under  their  hands,  and  so  were 
ordinary  people.  Opportunity  might  vary, 
but  the  spirit  was  one;  the  small  feat  was 
earnest  of  the  greater.  If  ordinary  had  that 
sense,  the  thought  formally  inspired;  it  had 
splendour.  The  country  of  such  women 
should  never  be  overthrown;  and  if  volcani- 
cally  upheaved,  this  strength  commanded  by 
clear  souls  should  mightily  help  to  press 
eruption  down. 


XX 

AND  now  this  most  unpraisable  com- 
pany was  to  pass  out  of  your  exist- 
ence, if  never  out  of  memory.  Very 
various  they  were  in  temperament  and  in 
powers,  and  only  in  the  great  cardinal  quali- 
ties alike.  When  should  you  forget  a  Matron 
in  mind  and  body  least  ponderous  of  that 
honourable  order,  yet  bearing  a  load  of  re- 
sponsibility as  if  it  were  a  bird  perched  on 
her  shoulder?  This  was  a  ruler  who  pal- 
pably ruled,  and  without  timidity.  You 
deemed  her  one  who,  doing  justice,  should 
not  fear  hatred,  hearing  the  murmur  of 
wrong  heads  as  music.  Within  her  sphere 
she  held  dictatorship,  in  Pain's  houses,  where 
there  is  stress  always,  decision  must  out- 
run debate.  Keen  as  a  sword,  her  mind  was 
as  bright;  as  a  blade  reflects  the  ray,  at  the 
right  incidence  she  would  laugh  out  like  a 
girl.  She  could  feel  with  the  strange  levity 
which,  between  pains,  hovers  in  the  wards, 
the  pathetic  foolishness  of  the  afflicted,  when, 
203 


204  Domu0  Dolotisi 

under  reprieve,  they  hunger  after  nonsense; 
when  the  bow,  strung  dangerously  tight, 
springs  back  to  the  counter-curve.  She  suf- 
fered it,  she  laughed  with  it,  knowing  it  bet- 
ter called  alleviation.  What  else  might  she 
do,  being  herself  abettor,  chief  hedger  of  the 
fence  that  sheltered  us  from  the  world's 
troubles,  silencing  anxious  consciences  with 
command  of  idle  days?  She  took  on  herself 
the  burden  of  our  small  quotidian  cares,  of 
our  food,  our  covering,  all  our  reduced  life's 
business.  It  was  as  if  she  prescribed  for  us 
this  thrice-blessed  silliness,  and  watched  us 
drink  like  wine  that  which  in  truth  was  medi- 
cine. She  was  wise  in  many  ways,  and  most 
when  she  seemed  it  least.  Thus  at  first  you 
would  think  she  wasted  time,  talking  at  your 
bed's  foot  on  all  matters  and  sundry,  as  if  this 
were  her  day's  chief  affair.  But  afterwards 
you  discovered  a  design  in  it,  both  profes- 
sional and  human.  It  was  on  your  bad  days 
that  she  flowed  with  talk.  She  knew  that  to 
float  a  heaviness  you  need  a  flood. 

And  when  should  you  forget  Noctiluca, 
rallier  of  souls  in  darkness  and  in  eclipse; 
or  rather,   surpassing  driver  on  the   rough 


Domu0  Dolotis  205 

paths,  for  in  all  of  us  there  was  more  of  mule 
than  star.  How  many  nights,  with  her 
light  lash,  had  she  not  stung  despondency 
away?  She  could  dispel  our  lethargies  and 
shame  our  fears;  her  veterinary  art  was  such 
that  there  was  not  one  of  us,  at  all  able  to  go, 
that  she  would  not  keep  upon  the  track. 
Never  did  soul  more  vivid  frequent  shadows, 
or  one  whom  the  spirits  of  darkness,  if  such 
there  be,  would  more  gladly  have  undone. 
How  often  did  you  feel  it  shame  that  so 
brave  a  succourer  should  live,  as  it  were,  be- 
tween the  corner  and  the  hole,  unknown  and 
unapplauded.  Yet  perhaps  she  repined  less 
for  herself;  for  she  was  combative  and  sharp 
with  ironies;  and  in  this  place  she  served  a 
cause  which  she  could  neither  combat  nor 
mock.  This  noble  and  obscure  service  might 
all  the  time  spare  her  bitterness;  in  work 
more  conspicuous  but  less  great,  you  could 
conceive  her  rebel,  and  spending  in  some  bar- 
ren conflict  the  life  now  given  to  grace. 
Here,  though  she  might  mock  the  regulation, 
her  heart  would  not  suffer  defiance  of  the 
law;  though  cold  to  constituted  powers,  she 
could  love  the  cause  for  which  they  stood. 


2o6  Domu$  Dolotis 

Thus  loyal  to  her  end,  she  was  safely  con- 
trary in  herself,  and  could  indulge  her  con- 
ceit of  a  conscience  dead.  A  nature  finely 
luminous  and  planetary  in  the  remembered 
darkness  of  those  nights,  which,  just  because 
she  moved  in  them,  were  splendid  to  have 
known. 

Nor  should  the  company  of  this  ship  go 
unrecalled,  the  non-commissioned  nurses 
drawn  together  from  the  four  quarters  of 
the  country  as  if  to  show  the  strains  yet  bred 
between  our  seas.  There  was  Severiana  of 
the  Midlands,  in  aspect  often  austere,  but 
less  stern  than  she  seemed,  one  on  whose 
face  a  curt  smile  might  mean  refusal,  a 
frown,  as  like  as  not,  indulgence;  a  pre- 
cise mind,  guiding  infallible  hands.  There 
was  she  of  the  South,  long  home-tied  and 
kept  from  this  career,  for  which  not  the  less, 
by  some  predestination,  her  unwitting  par- 
ents had  given  her  birth.  For  she  came  to  it 
foreordained,  and  for  long  success,  bringing 
a  maternal  soul.  Of  the  younger  genera- 
tion, two  were  of  the  Principality,  the  first 
not  capable  of  any  gloom,  but  like  the 
girl  of  the  Greek  idyll,  with  the  spring  in  her 


Domu0  Dolour  207 

eyes,  very  Oceanid,  a  swimmer  in  Cambrian 
tides.  The  other  was  of  more  mystery,  the 
truer  Celt,  with  a  voice  musical  as  hill-brooks, 
where  they  sound  low  over  the  deep  pools, 
rounding  the  rocks;  a  nature  needing  to  be 
fathomed,  with  something  always  further  to 
be  divined;  often  merry,  more  often  with- 
drawn into  herself,  and  inspiring  content  with 
silence.  There  was  their  comrade  from  the 
East  Riding,  abrim  with  the  kindly  Saxon 
virtues,  genially  beaming  over  all  things 
through  large  orbed  spectacles,  the  windows 
of  a  friendly  spirit:  the  sight  of  her  upon 
dark  days  cheered  like  a  doctor's  good  re- 
port. There  was  a  girl  from  the  North  West 
so  full  of  natural  sympathies  that  learning 
might  find  in  her  scant  room.  But  the  years 
were  before  her;  this  all-puissant  discipline 
here  beginning  for  her  might  work  transform- 
ing change;  and  as  it  could  simplify  the  sly, 
might  now  by  contrary  elaborate  the  simple. 
There  were  among  the  rest  two  yet  to 
be  remembered,  each  foil  to  the  other. 
One  had  a  Spanish  strain  in  the  blood,  and  a 
great  gift  of  deliberate  movement,  even  in 
the   muscles  that  controlled  her   smile;  the 


2o8  Domu0  Dolorig 

other  was  instant  In  mirth,  and  might  have 
closed  a  whole  peal  of  laughter  before  that 
Iberian  smile  was  well  begun.  Among  all 
these  none  had  the  accomplishment  of  some 
in  the  great  houses,  who  will  respond  to  any 
patient's  interest,  discuss  Beethoven  or  du 
Bellay,  and  delimit  the  boundaries  of  the  arts. 
It  had  been  privilege  to  have  encountered  one 
of  that  company;  but  you  were  well  content 
with  minds  less  versatile  and  singly  devoted  to 
helpful  life.  Not  all  unworthy  to  be  named 
with  them  was  that  catastrophic  ward-maid,  a 
popular  philosophy  incarnate,  London's  own 
cheerful  child.  Sometimes  for  old  sake's 
sake,  but  in  memory's  blessed  silence,  she 
should  repeat  for  you  her  demonstration  that 
all  things  change  and  are  replaced;  that  in 
the  end  worst  chaos  passes,  and  the  old  order, 
coming  back,  looks  new. 

So  this  lesser  House  of  Pain  wrought  on, 
lost  upon  London's  edge,  to  all  the  centripet- 
ally  inclined  and  circlers  round  mid  points  a 
place  out  of  existence,  as  deep  in  obscurity  of 
unsignifying  space,  as  if  set  in  the  desert 
which  is  named  Abode  of  Emptiness.  So  it 
should  have  been  to  you  a  few  years  since; 


Domu0  Dolon'g  209 

but  pain  opens  many  eyes.  Even  now  the 
mind  had  not  returned  from  its  astonishment 
that  in  relative  influence  on  a  life  a  hospital 
of  no  wide  fame  might  stand  in  a  comparison 
with  a  university;  the  two  had  seemed  so 
wholly  incommensurable  in  all  things,  that 
none  but  an  eccentric  fancy  should  have  set 
them  in  one  line  of  thought.  But  comparison 
there  was.  In  scale,  in  manifestation,  in  vari- 
ousness  of  all  endowment  polewise  apart, 
they  were  yet  vehicles  in  their  different  ways 
of  the  one  ultimate  power  for  those  who  have 
to  live, — the  vital;  with  any  equality  in  that, 
whatever  their  disparities,  they  must  in  jus- 
tice be  compared  together.  Once  in  a  cathe- 
dral lit  with  a  magnificence  of  mediaeval  glass 
there  had  risen  before  you  far-celebrated 
windows,  vast,  and  storied  up  and  down 
their  traceries  with  narrative  and  symbol  in 
colours  of  all  dye,  so  intricate  that  sight 
must  climb  and  cross,  descend  and  climb  again 
to  follow  the  tale,  drawn  on  and  never 
tired  by  the  charm  of  interpretable  things 
nobly  framed  and  presented.  Conceiving 
that  after  such  vision  there  could  not  be 
within  the  same  walls  any  other  inlet  of  light 


210  Domu0  Dolotist 

worthy  a  glance  (and  no  guide  taught  you 
better),  you  thought  straightway  to  go  out 
with  the  one  great  memory  to  dream  of.  But 
on  the  way  some  influence  led  you  apart  into 
an  aisle;  it  was  a  definite  urging,  as  if  fingers 
plucked  your  sleeve.  There,  at  the  far  end, 
suddenly  seen,  was  a  window  low  and 
plain,  with  carrels  of  a  single  colour;  it  had 
no  multitude  of  forms,  nor  any  diversity 
but  such  as  that  one  hue  might  receive  from 
uneven  thicknesses  in  the  glass,  or  irregulari- 
ties of  plane.  But  this  was  azure  of  fathom- 
less air,  blue  of  zenith  sent  immediate  down. 
It  was  the  clear  soul  of  colour;  it  held  you 
motionless;  and  the  thought  flashed  up  that 
here  was  the  equal  of  that  magnificence. 
There  were  two  greatnesses,  not  one;  and  to 
have  gone  forth  ignorant  of  the  second 
should  have  more  than  halved  your  joy.  The 
university  and  hospital  stood  in  a  like  way 
beside  each  other.  The  first  with  all  contrast 
and  richness  of  lights  had  seemed  enough 
for  one  existence;  it  might  be  that  of  your 
own  motion  you  had  not  been  at  pains  to  seek 
further.  As,  but  for  a  hint  of  Chance,  you 
might  never  have  seen  that  soul  of  colour, 


Domug  Dolon0  211 


so,  but  for  the  didactic  blow,  you  might  have 
missed  the  spirit  of  the  House  of  Pain. 

Such  were  these  people,  whom  to  know 
was  very  great  acquaintance.  It  seemed  so 
great  that  you  could  not  but  tell  of  them,  of 
the  place  where  they  worked,  of  the  order  to 
which  they  belonged,  fountain  and  source  of 
so  much  that  they  were.  It  was  perhaps  a 
trespass  and  presumption.  Even  were  it 
time  of  peace,  your  claim  to  speak  of  hospi- 
tals must  have  been  small  while  knowledge 
thrice  as  wide  was  silent;  it  was  far  smaller 
now,  when  the  Term  of  Pain  was  advanced 
ever  further  into  darkness  and  the  host  of 
those  enduring  to  the  last  daily  increased. 
You  had  but  crossed  the  edge  of  the  heavy 
shadow;  all  these  went  into  its  heart.  You 
had  but  touched  the  thunder-cloud;  they 
passed  into  it  and  were  folded  round.  They 
suffered  wherever  their  hard  chance  made 
shift  for  them;  you  had  known  a  place  of 
election  in  its  happiest  hour,  when  all  flowed 
smoothly;  nothing  had  gone  backward,  noth- 
ing awry.  Your  one  advantage  over  them 
lay  in  being  of  an  age  more  contemplative 
and  patient  of  a  long  stillness.    You  had  not, 


212  Domus  Doloris 

like  these,  been  brutally  scythed  down  in 
youth  by  war,  to  fret  over  a  life's  path  divert- 
ed or  an  ambition  swept  away;  with  a  resid- 
ual span  too  short  to  care  for,  you  could  give 
your  mind  placidly  to  surrounding  things. 
You  did  not,  staring  at  your  blank  walls,  feel 
surging  in  on  you  from  four  surfaces  the 
enormous  weariness  of  the  ages,  as  a  poet 
felt  who,  years  ago,  lay  thus  in  a  Scottish 
ward,  sore  for  his  prime  sucked  from  him  by 
vampire  hours,  and  defiantly  singing  his  loss. 
Legions  of  many  armies  now  knew  all  that  he 
knew,  and  far  more,  the  misery  of  youth 
maimed,  the  uttermost  secrets  of  Pain's 
house.  These  had  facts  enough  for  the  real- 
ist's worst  hunger.  You  could  never  pass 
such  test  in  the  extreme  knowledge,  or  de- 
scribe all  to  the  last  phial  or  lancet.  But  it 
was  not  your  pretension  to  sate  realists.  You 
wanted  to  tell  something  thankfully  about  an 
inconspicuous  greatness,  and  the  effect  of  it 
upon  your  mind;  how  extraordinarily  the 
spirit  of  it  had  come  up  out  of  quietness  with 
an  omnipotence  of  seizure  and  invasion,  and 
a  light  broad  as  dawning  day;  how  the  faith 
held  you  fast  that  this  power  could  only  be 


Domu0  Doloris:  213 

possessed  by  that  which  had  great  affinity 
and  inheritance  in  future  time.  For  you,  this 
spirit,  though  it  wrought  in  a  corner  of  ex- 
istence, was  kin  to  that  which  must  one  day 
save  the  world,  unless  the  fabric  of  our  state- 
craft were  doomed  to  fall  in  ruin,  or  sub- 
side meanly  into  its  dust.  With  all  its 
energy  and  life,  it  kept  the  balance  between 
heart  and  mind  which  gives  to  emotion  law 
and  to  reason  soul.  It  lived  for  science,  but 
a  science  touched  with  internal  fire;  it  lived 
for  feeling,  but  a  feeling  masterfully  reined. 
By  virtue  of  that  balance  it  was  of  the  force 
ordained  to  move  the  human  mass  and  make 
the  world  new;  which  force  was  never  mind 
alone,  but  a  mutuality  of  powers  composed. 
This  spirit  distributed  through  other  spheres, 
and  changed  to  meet  new  needs,  should,  like 
that  Roman  service  of  lustration,  transform 
the  face  of  things.  Could  you  but  shadow 
forth  the  effect  upon  your  mind,  you  should 
rest  contented,  for  the  aim  was  not  to  paint 
an  interior  Dutch-fashion,  complete  with  eve- 
ry pot  and  pan,  but  to  suggest  an  immanence 
of  light.  Not  the  detail,  but  the  light  of 
the  House  of  Pain  was  principal  and  sover- 


214  Domu0  Dolon'g 

eign  to  its  understanding;  and  the  problem 
for  your  despair  was  in  any  way  and  however 
faintly  to  convey  that  which  here  had  quick- 
ened the  being,  and  searched  it  far  down  into 
its  depths.  In  any  way  to  make  imaginable 
this  luminous  quality  and  grace  should  suffice 
you;  for  this  influence  that  sustained  lives 
was  fine  as  the  air  and  beyond  your  art  to 
render.  But  there  was  no  escape  from  the 
attempt ;  an  inward  force  drove  to  fulfilment. 
It  must  be  made,  and  that  before  the  old 
cajoling  world  urged  desistance.  For  most 
surely  the  cajoler  should  tell  you  soon  that 
you  had  dreamed;  that  as  you  lay  scanning 
your  blank  walls,  "like  some  old  battered 
sphinx  chin-deep  in  sand,"  you  had  made  no 
wonderful  discovery  of  truth,  but  seen  mirage 
over  waste,  forms  without  substance  appear- 
ing and  vanishing  away.  It  would  say  that 
sands  and  a  warm  sun  together  work  strange- 
ly upon  the  eyes;  and  being  of  a  great  art  in 
persuasion,  it  might  prevail.  It  would  ad- 
vise restriction  to  material  things  that  please 
the  outward  eye;  it  might  end  by  imposing 
its  prudent  point  of  view.  Here,  near  the 
event,  the  rasher  course  seemed  the  way  of 


Domu0  Dolorig  215 

honour.  It  were  better  to  fail,  reaching  after 
things  unseizable,  than  to  succeed  with  ex- 
actly depicted  gear.  While  therefore  this 
faith  was  fresh,  you  must  strive  to  convey 
the  light. 


XXI 

IT  was  the  day  of  going  free,  imperfect 
splendour,  in  the  West  threatening 
and  uncertain,  in  the  South  of  a  limpid 
storms.  The  car,  reaching  the  straight  road, 
leapt  forward,  and  forthwith  consciousness 
was  drawn  into  an  ecstasy,  lost  to  all  things 
save  joy  in  speed  and  the  voice  of  the  large 
air.  The  small  machine  might  have  been  the 
sun's  chariot;  sight  and  mind  were  dazzled 
and  confused  together.  From  the  right  hand 
and  the  left  images  rained  in  and  were  flung 
off;  perception,  incredibly  belated,  caught 
none;  before  it  could  define  or  fix,  new  waves 
were  on  it,  and  upon  these  fresh  waves  in- 
numerable from  the  green  main  beyond,  each 
rising  behind  other,  away  to  the  far  line  of 
the  sky,  the  one  thing  stable  and  fast.  All 
senses  were  alight,  life  seemed  audible  with- 
in, a  murmuring,  humming  flame.  After 
months  splint-bound  or  crutched,  so  to  move 
like  an  arrow  in  the  blue, — who  should  say 
what  it  was  ?  In  vain  those  with  you  laughed, 
216 


Domu0  Doloris  217 

refusing  to  this  moderated  course  the  name 
of  speed;  you  heard  and  did  not  hear,  giving 
heed  only  to  the  music  of  the  divine  air  roar- 
ing past.  They  know  not  speed  who  know 
not  slowness;  the  full  secret  of  this  truth  was 
yours.  And  still  the  green  country  rushed 
up  on  either  hand,  parted,  and  went  behind, 
a  wake  without  sound.  Only  with  a  long 
climb  to  a  ridge  did  the  first  elation  fail;  as 
the  pace  slowed,  the  hedges  ceased  to  leap 
past  dolphin-like,  the  trees  seemed  pausing 
to  be  known.  Now  at  last  things  were  seen 
in  their  old  habit,  familiar  lives,  the  wayside 
grasses,  the  hot-head  thistles  by  the  ditch, 
briony  twining.  Now  from  the  top  the  Eng- 
lish land  spread  far  on  each  side  of  the 
ridge;  on  the  right,  fields  gleamed,  roads 
wound,  hills  dwindled  to  a  sky-line  confused 
in  haze,  a  county's  length  away;  on  the  left 
were  near  hills  undulant  and  pine-crested, 
with  hamlets  here  and  there  across  the  hol- 
low, nested  far  down.  There  seemed  noth- 
ing left  for  life  but  to  draw  deep  breaths  and 
sink  sight  in  space  and  verdure. 

But  in  the  moods  of  the  shattered,  from 
zenith  to  nadir  is  but  one  step;  and  in  a  brief 


2i8  Domus  Dolorig 

round,  experience  knows  all  fates.  Just  when 
life  needed  the  uncompared  delight,  pureness 
of  joy  was  spoiled  by  contrasts  and  likenings 
officiously  revived  by  memory,  or  sent  down 
by  envious  gods.  Suddenly  the  skies  dropped 
coldness,  earth  breathed  answering  chill;  sun- 
light faded.  The  moralising  mind,  which 
you  had  thought  for  this  one  day  quiescent, 
broke  in  on  the  pure  joy  of  sense,  never  in  all 
your  days  less  welcome.  It  contrived  by  sym- 
bolising arts  to  make  this  scene  of  richness 
drearily  speak  of  loss.  An  importunate  re- 
membrancer, it  might  have  left,  you  thought, 
this  one  day  free,  this  one  hour.  But  here 
were  the  reveries  of  the  wards  come  after 
you.  A  voice  seemed  already  to  have  made 
plain  that  all  this  fair  land  outspread  was  but 
a  figure  of  the  incorrigible  old  world,  ignobly 
relaxed,  inertly  opposing  all  the  high  con- 
straint which  was  the  lesson  of  the  House  of 
Pain.  Were  they  likely  ever  to  be  forsaken, 
this  old  world's  vagueness  and  diffusion,  by 
which  it  was  ever  neutral  to  its  own  good? 
This  soft-edged  landscape,  these  aimlessly 
outreaching  hills,  all  this  luxuriant  unzoned 
existence  told  the  same  tale.     Such  was  your 


Domu0  Dolori0  219 

weakness  that  you  could  not  defend  joy;  the 
voice  triumphed.  Behind  this  beauty  was 
indeed  a  world  straggling  to  all  its  aims,  in- 
curious, uncohering;  a  soulless,  ineffectual 
bulk  of  things.  These  uncertain  lights  and 
shadows,  changing  over  the  fields,  seemed  its 
disguises,  those  confused  echoes  risen  from 
the  farmsteads  were  its  voice.  Should  any 
spirit  of  clear  flame  ever  pass  into  that  of 
which  the  very  life  was  thus  eternally  to 
spread  in  a  rambling  hugeness,  indifferently 
null?  There  you  sat,  abstracted  out  of  the 
past  delight,  your  weak  body  in  relapse,  your 
spirits  answering  to  its  frailness.  But  at  last 
the  humour  of  things  brought  help :  here  was 
but  one  more  irony;  the  recovered  world, 
after  its  manner,  had  broken  its  own  spell. 
You  smiled  to  yourself,  thinking  how  Nocti- 
luca  would  have  understood.  You  heard  her 
saying:  "What  else  should  common  sense  ex- 
pect?" 

A  raindrop  falling  warned  to  depart.  The 
engine  renewed  is  sound;  there  was  a  glide 
forward,  then  speed  again.  In  the  recovered 
joy  of  it,  light  once  more  began  to  overcome 
shadow.     It  might  be  gain  that  the  sum  of 


220  Domu0  Dolon0 

things  was  yet  mere  mass.  The  hindrance 
to  creation  lay  not  in  the  formless  but  in  the 
ill-shapen,  not  in  the  flatly  unaccomplished 
but  in  the  doubtfully  half-done;  when  the 
mountains  were  brought  forth  there  were 
few  preparatory  hills.  Therefore  the  spirit 
destined  to  mould  should  be  glad  for  a  mass 
thus  confusedly  spread  abroad;  upon  this  it 
should  accomplish  greater  work.  It  was  com- 
fortable to  believe  that  a  descent  of  the  spirit 
was  even  now  at  hand.  Millions  of  men  and 
women  in  the  greatest  house  Pain  ever 
reared  were  near  the  hour  of  their  dis- 
charge. These  also  should  come  forth 
on  a  high  place  to  survey  a  world  spread 
wide  below,  and  perceive  it  no  longer  habit- 
able to  any  who  had  come  up  out  of  chasten- 
ing such  as  theirs.  And  these  should  not,  like 
a  sole  watcher,  gaze  powerless  over  the  im- 
mense diffusion.  They  should  have  power 
to  accomplish  if  they  would — they,  millions 
of  wills.  They  should  not  know  the  humbling 
of  the  single  soul  before  its  own  doubt,  or  the 
despair  of  helplessness.  They  should  see 
their  scope  clear;  they  should  rise  and  go 
down,  multitudinous,   and  from  strength  to 


Domu0  Dolotis  221 

strength  make  their  heritage  new.  Here  was 
a  consoling  dream,  nor  vain,  but  such  as  might 
be  justified  by  a  theory  of  human  fate.  It 
proposed  no  certainty,  but  good  chance;  no 
finahty,  yet  an  end.  Fate  sanctioned  no  pre- 
sumption of  the  best;  a  sober  behef  in  better 
things  it  might  not  disallow.  Man  had  not 
the  extreme  sight;  he  were  best  not  seek,  by 
his  own  lights,  to  define  the  uttermost.  Be- 
fore the  man  there  was  a  mist,  before  the 
beast  a  wall,  only  before  the  god  clearness. 
So  the  god  had  vision;  the  beast  content,  the 
man  change.  His  destiny  was  not  proven  the 
meanest;  nor  was  it  sure  that,  could  he 
choose,  he  would  prefer  the  others:  pride 
should  deny  him  the  beast's  part,  knowledge 
of  himself  the  god's.  Wisdom  therefore 
bade  him  keep  his  lot  of  change,  as  that  fitly 
sorting  with  his  powers  and  his  endeavouring 
soul.  In  the  good  age  he  should  look  for  the 
worse;  in  the  bad  seek  auspice  of  the  better. 
There  was  no  pledge  from  heaven  that  great 
days  should  endure  forever;  but  to  trust 
that  they  should  last  long  was  human  duty. 
None  might  have  greater  trust  than  he  who 
comes  newly  from  the  House  of  Pain,  fresh 


222  Domu0  Dolotis 

from  a  discipline  which  works,  as  perhaps  no 
other,  for  the  need  of  a  better  age.  For  the 
future  will  demand  of  each  good  citizen  such 
use  of  personality  as  this  discipline  already 
asks  of  those  in  its  control.  It  will  bid  all 
strive  for  the  whole,  not  with  the  sole  mind 
or  heart,  but  with  each  in  its  several  fulness; 
it  will  call  on  them  to  remember  a  far  goal, 
yet  to  walk  the  while  by  the  science  of  life, 
going  forward  step  by  step;  it  will  exact  that 
spirit  of  sacrifice  which  builds  up  and  does 
not  destroy  true  selfhood.  These  things  he 
has  seen  the  service  of  the  hospital  teach;  he 
doubts  if  in  their  balance  and  right  relation 
they  are  so  bravely  taught  in  any  other  place. 
To  him  it  seems  that  the  future  Is  already 
served  In  the  House  of  Pain.  For  there  the 
spirit  of  best  promise  for  times  hereafter  Is 
manifest  and  actual  now. 


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